Food and Puzzles don't mix

[Azel]

lol - well Grimrock does pay homage to 80's gaming

[sarsharek]

Food is great and should stay. it's actually to easy. I remember playing dungeon master, getting 15 hours into the game way down in the dungeon and starving to death. over and over and over. thats why i never beat it as a kid. that came later when i found dmjava as an adult.

you dont even lose health in grimrock for starving.

Grimrock 1 and 2 are amazing. their is room for improvement and that improvement comes from getting closer and closer to the ultimate dungeon crawler ever. dungeon master. not newer fans dragging us farther away into easy mode.

[Azel]

Agreed that Grimrock 1 and 2 are great. Although Grimrock 2 is actually less of a dungeon crawler than the first game. Part 2 is much more of a hybrid (crawler/RPG/adventure) as opposed to a strict crawler. I'm sure food will stay, which is fine. Since the game is already becoming less of a crawler the impact of food will lessen as well.

Case in point, you mentioned that in Dungeon Master you starved to death. Well in both LoG 1 and LoG 2 it is literally impossible to starve to death; because Grimrock is not a pure crawler. I feel the greatness of Grimrock comes from the fact that it does not pigeonhold itself to a single genre. I also think that the aspects of Grimrock that appeal to the dungeon crawler genre are the "grid-based-action" and "strict first-person-perspective" as opposed to the inclusion of food. There are many great dungeon crawlers that avoid food altogether; and on the other end of the spectrum, there are RPG's that play nothing like a crawler yet rely heavily on food.

Food is not genre specific.

[sarsharek]

Grimrock 2 is still a dungeon crawler to me. I dont care what you make the backround look like. twigroot forest is just as much a dungeon level as the mechanics of the game are still the exact same. We are really just talking about how it looks. Their are no towns or shopping or npc or anything really to make it an rpg. just random statues and notes you find every now and then to guide you. This should totally be expanded on if theirs a grimrock 3 but as long as theirs no interaction with npc's and shopping and stuff it's a dungeon crawler to me.

it's a great game i just couldnt imagine beating dungeon master (wich grimrock is obviously based on) in a week or so.

Id prefer food that dosnt re-spawn and you eventually lose health for starvation. They should also add in water and flasks.


my first playthrough I got into ruins of desarune and realized I was almost out of food, i had no idea it would be that long a level with that little food. I barely finished the level. it was a challenge and fun. I dont necesarily think i am "entitled" to go through a game, if i get stuck and didnt save properly and starve, then thats my fault and i need to improve myself as a gamer. it never even crossed my mind for me to come to the forums and make a post saying food is stupid and dosnt belong with puzzles.

Im not trying to flame, iv just been reading these forums and alot of the things that make grimrock a solid series of games are things that some people want removed. These people tend to have not played the really early dungeon crawlers and honestly miss them. I do, and I dont want the developers to change things to please some people. forests dosnt make this not a dungeon crawler but alot of the requests on this forum would.

[Azel]

Well I don't think anyone in this thread is saying food is stupid, just that the feeling of urgency that comes with needing to feed your party tends to work against the system of complex puzzles. One thing we did learn in this discussion is that in the original design the developers did not include food at all. It seems that the original pre-release fans and beta testers really wanted both food and water added, so the dev's compromised by adding only food (not water) yet making it plentiful and low-impact.

So maybe instead of thinking that people are trying to change Grimrock by taking something away, instead consider that some people might be promoting the developers original design.

In some threads on this forum people argue for more NPC's due the fact that Grimrock has strong RPG elements. Others argue for more of the Dungeon Crawler aspects; while others are more in favor of the Adventure puzzle solving elements.

I also think it's a bad assumption to think that people making certain game requests haven't played early dungeon crawlers. I've been playing crawlers on Floppy Disk since the Windows 3.1 days, long before Dungeon Master was released; like Wizardry which arguably gave birth to the dungeon crawler genre. I was massively addicted to "Shadow of Yserbius" and "Champions of Krynn" ... and years later my favorite crawler of all time was released, Stonekeep. None of these legendary crawlers have food implemented.

I consider myself a huge fan of crawlers, RPG's, and Adventure games; which is why I love the Grimrock series so much. From my perspective, the people in this thread that argue in favor of food so strictly are not "dungeon crawler" fans, they are just fans of a single game, Dungeon Master. I would rather see Grimrock become the best crawler possible, not the best version of Dungeon Master possible.

[Neutronium Dragon]

The current design makes food worth paying attention to but not worth getting stressed about, and that's the ideal balance, IMO.

The old games that used limited food and killed your party without it were a means of introducing fake difficulty, effectively forcing the player to restart (and re-grind) the game over and over until they figured out the 'correct' way to do things that wouldn't cause their time limit to run out (because that's what it was - a time limit in an edible guise). While some people like that, it would be a huge turnoff to the player base as a whole, since most people playing games today have other priorities than re-running the same game until they manage to guess what the developers were thinking. It's the same reason why adventure games today generally avoid the old Sierra model of, "Oh, you didn't know you needed to do that critically important (and totally non-obvious) thing on the first screen, so now that you're near the end of the game, you're stuck and have to restart!" A few people would love it. Most wouldn't be willing to put up with it.

[Anurias]

I don't recall anyone in this thread quoting any of the developers on the original design of the game... I only recall speculation on potential compromises based on quotes of what people had requested before the initial game was released... nowhere did anyone state that a developer said anything.

[Azel]

I don't recall anyone in this thread quoting any of the developers on the original design of the game... I only recall speculation on potential compromises based on quotes of what people had requested before the initial game was released... nowhere did anyone state that a developer said anything.

Fair enough, no developer quotes presented yet, so here's one:
"what this game is all about: pure oldschool dungeon exploration, mindblowing puzzles and intense atmosphere in the spirit of classics like Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, Ultima Underworld and Arx Fatalis."

http://www.grimrock.net/2011/06/30/welcome/

So in Dungeon Master, Eye of the Beholder, and Arx Fatalis you can starve to death, whereas in Ultima Underworld the primary effect is impaired health regeneration. In Grimrock the food implementation is on par with Ultima Underworld versus the other three games. I completely support that. I also fully support the developers desire to have mind blowing puzzles, and since Grimrock 2 provides replenishing food sources and even an item that negates the effects of hunger, I also support the developers continued effort(s) in this regard.

Food became less of an issue in Grimrock 2 compared to the first game - I see that as progress

The current design makes food worth paying attention to but not worth getting stressed about, and that's the ideal balance, IMO.

The old games that used limited food and killed your party without it were a means of introducing fake difficulty, effectively forcing the player to restart (and re-grind) the game over and over until they figured out the 'correct' way to do things that wouldn't cause their time limit to run out (because that's what it was - a time limit in an edible guise). While some people like that, it would be a huge turnoff to the player base as a whole, since most people playing games today have other priorities than re-running the same game until they manage to guess what the developers were thinking. It's the same reason why adventure games today generally avoid the old Sierra model of, "Oh, you didn't know you needed to do that critically important (and totally non-obvious) thing on the first screen, so now that you're near the end of the game, you're stuck and have to restart!" A few people would love it. Most wouldn't be willing to put up with it.

Well said. It was only during a handful of moments in Grimrock 2 where the food urgency added a bit of stress for me (hence this thread) but now that I've beaten the game, subsequent playthroughs have proven food to be more of a commodity than anything else. Certainly not worth complaining about. I am thoroughly pleased with how much less of an impact food has in Grimrock 2 compared to the original.

[minmay]

Food became less of an issue in Grimrock 2 compared to the first game - I see that as progress

Did it? Grimrock 1 had infinite food too, and food consumption rate is generally higher in Grimrock 2. Casting spells in Grimrock 1 increased your nutrition level, now casting spells decreases it. There's the neck chain, sure, but it has no benefit in combat so it is plainly suboptimal to wear unless you have fewer useful amulets than you have party members.

[Azel]

I'm sure you're right about the food consumption rate between both games, I just know how different it felt. I carried around crates of food from level to level in Grimrock 1, just to be sure I never rant out. That was nothing I really had to consider in Grimrock 2 (aside from the annoyance of spending too much time on a puzzle).

Sure there were some areas where monsters re-spawned in Grimrock 1, thus providing endless food, but it was very limited and nowhere near as abundant as Grimrock 2. You yourself stated that one can easily create an endless supply of "fish" in a matter of seconds in Grimrock 2. The same cannot be said about the first game. So it doesn't matter if food consumption rate was increased in part 2 considering how quick and easy it is to auto-spawn unlimited food. Not to mention that one of the rebuttals against my suggestion in this thread states that the penalty for going hungry in Grimrock can almost be ignored, even without the Neck Chain. More proof that food is less of a factor the second time around.

Speaking of the Neck Chain, at first I thought that wearing it would be "gimping" the characters out. But in the end, once I hit some soft caps on the character levels (16 for standard classes, 20 for the Farmer) I found that jewelry made little to no difference whatsoever. Most of my team had max or near max resists, all their necessary skills were at the appropriate level, and my team was one-shotting most enemies (even boss battles were over in mere seconds). In a discussion about pharming the Herder's Den for exp you yourself stated that pharming for experience is a waste of time since once players get their skills needed for a class there is little value added by trying to hit max levels. Well, the same principle holds true for jewelry. I didn't find much that I just "had to wear" in order to make a party member stronger or more useful. Once I hit the soft cap levels, most of what was equipped seemed just for show. More to the point, once I hit soft caps wearing the Neck Chain felt more beneficial than most of the other jewelry options. It gave results I could actually see and measure, vs results that look good on paper.