Cleve Blakemore presents: Grimoire (an Indiegogo project)

All I remember of daggerfall, is becoming a wereboar, and being immune damage from all the guards in the town, so I basically got to rampage about and do whatever I wanted.

Oh and getting stuck in randomly crap dungeons, where I'd get inside a wall or halfway through ceiling.

Until... the Eternal Summer. *shudder*

So...is it out yet?

HALT! HALT! HALT! HALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALTHALT!

HOO BOY HERE WE GO

http://www.filedropper.com/grimdemoinstallerv1_1

I figured he'd release the demo, anyone besides HHR going to take the plunge?

I am totally excited to actually give this thing a try, but first I want a file-taster to make sure this thing doesn't overwrite my WIndows directory or something.

Nope.

1. Downloaded demo.
2. Started game
3. Tried to switch the game to windowed mode.
4. Game crashes, had to kill it in Task Manager in order to get back to the desktop.

It's Grimoire, all right.

EDIT: Gave it another try.

1. Start demo
2. Choose "The Story".
3. Hit "next" three times.
4. Hit exit.
5. Fatal error, game crashes to desktop.

If this is really the consensus here, that the "streamlining" has been a positive evolution on all fronts, there's no point debating this particular point further. Still there are many old-school RPG fans who differ and believe that something has been lost, and Grimoire is supposed to cater to them.

Now let's try this out, and see if a baby can fly.

It might be useful to know that this is not the demo he is to release for the wider public, this is supposed to only be a stress test for the people who follow the forum thread where the link comes from.

I'm late to the party, but I totally agree on this. As someone who still plays Daggerfall on occasion, I'll say this: Daggerfall's concepts are great (there's a list somewhere of everything that was planned for Daggerfall that didn't get in; said list is about a page long), but the gameplay is buggy as hell. And this opinion is from someone who likes the game.

Same here. I'm not touching this until I know it's safe. Even then, I'm still going to approach this with some trepidation.

I can't even run the installer since it's dynamically linked against the VS runtime, which a fresh Windows 8 install doesn't have.

It might also be useful to know that Cleve can't make a demo that actually plays before you decide he needs more money.

Third and final try:

1) Start the game
2) Hit the button that says QUICK START.
3) Yay, I'm in the game! Oh my god this music is horrible.
4) Hover mouse over icons for a while before I discover there are no tool tips because HARDCORE 4 LYFE or something.
5) Click icons until an options screen comes up.
6) Lower music to 0.
7) Game crashes.

So, I think I'm done here. The saga of Cleve Blakemore ended like we all knew it would end: with a whimper, wrapped inside a fatal exception.

A demo of the demo. Makes sense.

Grimoire gets the LP it deserves.

Broken feature/tech-creep relics of a bygone era?

Well then

He said triumphantly, as his PC crashed for the fifth consecutive time.

It's an intelligence test. If you took it, you already failed.

I've installed it (although I couldn't pick my own directory, it just went straight for C:/Program Files/) and it does indeed run!

BEHOLD: THE TRUTHS YOU WERE ONCE DENIED



Maybe it would run better on a Commodore 64?



Okay, this loading screen is actually pretty cute. Although no true P&P roleplayer has dice with corners that sharp.



Menu screen! Gotta love that copyright duration. 1997-2013!

The font really is all aliased and jaggedy-looking like that on the menu buttons. Anyway, one button here is clearly begging to be clicked:



To a land of... (OVER-ACTIVE) IMAGINATION!



Mysterious metronome, check.



...why are we whispering about this mystic timepiece? Can it... hear us? Or.. will we wake the owl? They're nocturnal, after all. Or... crepuscular? Whatever.



So, mission is to wind the clock. Got it. And... that's the end of the story. I sure hope this five button interface isn't used only for this section!

NEXT: The credits!

Those shout-outs to other RPGs are hilarious.

But I thought no fatal bugs or true programming errors remained. Is that only true for 'Thal PCs?

Is it me or did he steal Mickey Mouse's hand for the cursor icon and just tint it yellow? Cuz like, check it, I'm only counting 4 fingers.

The main quest is to wind a giant magic space clock? ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME

Did he absorb the Zybourne Clock guys?

If you really think this is all it was then it's a shame. Essentially, PC RPGs used to ressemble more the gameplay system of their pen and paper ancestors, but ultimately have been adapted to a console audience and sacrificed some of these aspects. They still have their loyal fans today and allow gameplay and roleplaying possibilities that more streamlined games do not, so games that work more like those of 15-20 years ago are still welcome.

Cleve is known for his hyperbolic language, so this is nothing special.

Anyway it seems the source of these crashes has been found, it would have to do with folder permissions. The game installs in the program files directory, but if you just extract the content to a folder without writing/reading restrictions (I use c:/jeux/Grimoiredemo but you can use anything you want so long as it's not a protected folder) it will function fine. I reported some crashes in that thread, but they disappeared after I tried out that trick. It probably explains why XP users didn't encounter such issues.

Who cares. He's a racist misogynist scumbag whoHAHAHAHA DID YOU JUST SAY XP USERS

So, six total people (plus "Spore Productions", however many people they comprise). But seventeen years of development! That makes AT LEAST 6 x 17 x 365 x 24 = 89,3520 man-hours of CONTINUOUS development!



Unsung heroes indeed. Should I be alarmed there are only ten of them, despite this game being incredibly complex and containing hundreds of hours of gameplay, allegedly?

Oh no wait, one of them's a couple! Eleven people. Much better.



Wait, only fifteen years!? Well, now I'm not even sure I want to play it.

Really, you can't satirise these few paragraphs. The fact of them just sits there, in mute reproach.



It's like the nineties never ended.



Maybe he DID steal Mickey Mouse's finger for the cursor, and this is him giving credit?

Pretty sure that isn't the usual transliteration of Miyamoto.



That's right bitches, BIBLIOGRAPHY. Cleve isn't losing marks because his work was poorly sourced.

And look, at least three programming textbooks were used during in the same room as this game's development. No wonder every single bug was fixed and No True Programming Errors remain. I'll have to be watchful for deceitful FALSE programming errors, though.



I'm betting all six of these were conceived, developed and released in the time it took to make Grimoire. Hell, I'm betting the authors of these games were conceived, developed and released in a similar time frame.

I'm going to blame my cursor multiplication on my screenshot program, by the way. No sense dinging Cleve before the game has even begun, as it were.



Oh good, some monsters were involved in the beta testing as well. I'm pleased they were able to steer the game through the notorious fatal and torturous phase of game development. I presume now the product must merely be excruciating.



BAD COURAGE

CHILDREN ARE OUR LAST BEST HOPE, OBI WAN KENOBI

EAT MORE FAT

RETHINK IT ALL FROM SCRATCH!

(and develop it all from scratch, several times)

Ok I played this for about one minute and I already have a lot of questions:

- Why does the credits screen say "COMMODORE 64 FOREVER" on it?
- Why is so little of the screen used?
- Why does this hurt my eyes so much?
- Why is there a button that says "ENDGAME" than just kills you and kicks you out to the main menu?

I don't know about the Yendorian Tales guys, but Jeff Vogel has released about a dozen full-featured old-school RPGs in the time since Exile 1, 2, and 3.

Cleve wrote that screen in 1998.

Yeah, that's what I was assuming too. I just thought that pointing out the difference in scale between Vogel and Cleve might be instructive.

Meserach You're naming your barbarian, Cleve, right? You must

You want shameful forum beginnings? The first message board I joined was Rudius Media. Yes, the forum run by Tucker Max. He shut them down, basically taking his ball and going home, when the movie he made completely flopped. Thankfully some of the community matured beyond its creator and started a splinter forum that was actually decent last time I checked.

Screw this fooling around in menus! I hit "Quick Start!" to start! Quickly!



It's... everything I thought it would be.

So, we've been taking "a very long and deep nap" (ED: just regular sleeping, then?) here in a verdant meadow that's apparently been clear-cut by some terrifyingly autistic lumberjacks obsessed with perfect rectilinearity. The eight of us have been doing that. Collectively. Two lizards, two chicks, three bearded dudes, and an eyeball. Here in this forest location, at dusk.

Well, at least we got each other's names first.

While everyone finds their clothes:



Oh, I think I have some notions.



Shit, you're right. Did everyone get tested first? I knew I should have asked the eyeball for a recent doctor's certificate.



The little icon says "Enter" to advance these little snippets of text, but you can also left-click. This is a welcome flexibility and intuitiveness of interface which I am sure the game will continue to demonstrate throughout.



Well, that sounds important! Better check that out. Now, how do I bring up the quest journal?



This seems a likely button. I click it.



...hmm.

I'm impressed we've already identified 247 items! That must have been one informative orgy. Go team! Go.. nameless team. Well, whatever. None of this seems to be the journal. I hit exit.



Maybe this is it? It's probably maps, though.



Yup, that's a map. I have no idea what any of this does. I seem to be able to add text AND footnotes to the maps? Can I publish them to a peer-reviewed journal afterwards? No, probably not, since I can't find the journal.

I look at "View Atlas", which has a nice hand drawn picture that doesn't seem to do anything. I exit this one too.

Still no journal. Well, one last roll of the dice:

Continuing adventures in The Land of No Tooltips!

The dice prove to lead to an options menu, intuitively enough. I take the opportunity to save the game.



Right, what else to try? I click on the piles of money and gems at the bottom right:



This seems to bring up a status display in the text area. I'm mildly alaremd that it seems to be turn 8 already, even though I didn't think I had done anything. I discover with some clicking that merely clicking on this moneypile to bring up this status text constitutes a "turn" in this game. I sure hope there isn't some sort of turn-based time limit!

Speaking of time, my next experimental click goes on the hourglass:



I don;t know if that's a calendar and we just happened to hold this dogging session in the woods on New Year's, or if it's a simple count of time elapsed. And I have no idea how (or even if) turns map to hours.

There's only one big interface button left to click, the sleepy moon thing. Will the journal be here? I doubt it, that's petty much the universal symbol for sleep. And so it proves:



Everything goes grey, but the birds remain blue.



Lovely. I'm enjoying myself so far. How long did that take?



Yeah, but what's that in turns?



....something like 280? So a turn is roughly, what, a minute? Well, I'm learning.

I've given up on locating the journal now, more or less, and I'm just trying buttons to learn the interface. So next up I go for this shiny round one, next to the lizard presently known as Beowulf.



I am curtly informed:



Well, mystery solved there, at least.

So tempted to fire up the Win98 box and see what happens.

Not as good as his car crash story from usenet but I guess he's lost his personal fanfic touch with age. Also he must read a lot of Jojo what with his constant depictions of accurate chest sizes.

I try clicking the little arrows under the ankh. It emerges it changes the icon; presumably these are each representative actions the given character can undertake.

First up, Apply Mascara:



Okay, so I guess it's examine or look at?



NOTHING...dot dot dot.

The next icon, Open Detective Agency:



This gives me a cursor That says "Item" on it. I guess I click on an item with it, which then forms the basis of my detective agency? I try it on the owl that's apparently on the floor here, but nothing happens other than me picking it up.

I'm going to guess (using my DETECTIVE SKILLS) that this is an "identify" function, which would allow me to work out what objects are if I didn;t know already. Unfortunately the owl has no further mysteries to be plumbed?

Next icon, Deodorise Old Textbook:



Spellcasting!



Beowulf knows no spells. There are a wide range of spell schools to not know any spells in, though; from your classical elements, to Spirit and Astral (which are different, I guess?); Infernal and Necromancy, Arcane (aren't all spells Arcane?), a mysterious green one on the end I can't read which I am choosing to believe is Secret Neanderthal Power, and my personal favourite:



I can't wait to cast a PSYCHE! spell. That will be fantastic. Game of the Year.

Next in the icon round-up, Flex:



Perplexingly, this appears to be a Use Item button. I get the ITEM cursor again, and try it on the owl.



Uses owl figurine for what, though? Mind you, we found him passed out in a wood with a bunch of strangers, I think we can guess.

Next icon, Use Padlock As Duck Figurine To Intimidate Small Key:



Guess what this does!



? That is indeed confusing ?