Grimrock

Wow, sounds like some major changes!

My reactions:

Procedural generation is gone. Long live the editor! Every map and every encounter will be handcrafted.

Personally I'm breathing a sigh of relief. If anyone was to change my mind on procedural generation, it would have been you guys, so I was trying to keep an open mind about it, but I must say that I'm very glad to hear it's out of the plan now! Being a family man with a busy career and four kids means I don't care much about replayability, but the emphasis is on highest quality one-time experience, and that mean hand-crafted. I'll pay premium for that, and I know I'm not alone in that sentiment.

Focus on deep and tactical combat system. We want to make the combat really challenging so that every action you make every turn is a careful choice. Like playing chess with fantasy characters.

Sounds intriguing. I haven't really gotten into tactical RPGs since I've always preferred adventure, exploration, story, and puzzles. But I have played some in the past, and I trust you guys will get it right and make it worth engaging.

Focus on fun gameplay mechanics. We are not writing a book, not filming a movie, we are making a game, and gameplay is king.

Fair enough on the "not filming a movie", but I personally like a lot of story text, it draws me in.

No fluff. We want to make a tightly focused game, the same design principle we had with Grimrock. No filler content. Less is more. Or as Antoine de Saint-Exupery puts it famously “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

This sounds really good, like you don't want to waste my time, which I greatly appreciate. In the process, you end up making a very high quality game which inspires strong fans and very positive word of mouth via articles, reviews, etc.

Komag wrote:

Focus on fun gameplay mechanics. We are not writing a book, not filming a movie, we are making a game, and gameplay is king.

Fair enough on the "not filming a movie", but I personally like a lot of story text, it draws me in.

On this we agree, very, very much. The lack of "backstory" for Grimrock is what led me to writing that whole "Destiny's Chance" thing, because I needed some backstory - so I ended up creating my own.

Reached out to Petri about updates and he assured me:

Petri wrote: Hi! More updates are definitely coming! We've just been concentrating on the development side for a while... We'll put out an update before we leave for summer holidays. It's a promise!

Cheers,
Petri

Is there going to be a gameplay video for Druidstone ?

Certainly, at some point - wouldn't want it too early.

Can we at least have a setting for non-permadeath? As there are plenty of folks that cannot stand re-starting over and over again after losing their hard-earned character!... Otherwise, it's an insta-buy from me, especially if it's on gog!

Re: permadeath. The game isn't a procedural roguelike anymore -- we changed the design about a year ago. So there's no restarting and losing hard-earned characters. At least not by default. We are considering having a mode similar to "insave ironman" with permadeath etc. for veterans and well... insane people Some players seemed to really enjoy the hardcore settings in LOG2 and I can totally understand why.

Re: gameplay video. Most definitely we'll post videos, but we're pretty shy of showing unfinished stuff, so... not just yet.

Btw. we just posted a dev update with a new screenshot and information about the ability system, among other things. Check it out:
http://druidstone-game.com/hot-summer-2018-dev-update

http://druidstone-game.com/druidstone-reaches-alpha

Gameplay soon?

eon wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 5:25 pm http://druidstone-game.com/druidstone-reaches-alpha

Gameplay soon?

That'd be nice to see.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/9546 ... hir_Forest