Cleve Blakemore presents: Grimoire (an Indiegogo project)

peterb prognosticates like a motherfucker

The bugs aren't really bugs.

No, of course not! They're features!

[programmer rage]

I... uh... buh... WHAT? Programming standards DON'T WORK THAT WAY! AGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!

[/programmer-rage]

Certainly Ultima 7 isn't famous because of its SHITTY combat system. It just has a nice world interaction, NPC schedules and dialogue. The system itself is one of the worst ever.

My favorite part is HHR saying that people here rail against the demo for not having a help screen, manual or tutorial, then says how people here loved a game that had a huge manual and har har we suck for being old/hypocrites.

It's like when I watched Lou Dobbs go on O'Reilly and started with "You can use statistics to prove anything" then used statistics to prove how the President's statistics were wrong.

Lurker here, but wanted to thank everyone, particularly HHR, for the utter joy of this thread. Haven't laughed this hard in a while.

Bonus for pointing me to that rpg forum, I'm getting a kick out of the serious beta testing and back-slapping going on over there, although it took a while to realize they were serious and that it wasn't an award winning performance art piece.

I've been gaming long enough to have coded my own games in BASIC, following instructions in the back of a zine. I traded copies on floppies. I got pirated copies of games from #oldwarez. And you know what? I DON'T WANT TO FUCKING DO THAT SHIT ANYMORE. I've grown up, and so has gaming. It's one thing to release a retro styled RPG, something with the flavor and love of the old days - I'd be absolutely down for that. It's another thing entirely to utterly ignore every single fucking development in UI design - hell, in gaming design - since the early 90's. Frankly, if I feel like a trip down memory lane, I'll fire up World of Xeen, or another New World Computing epic, and take notes on my NWC Stationary. The experience will be a hell of a lot more polished - and a hell of a lot more modern - than this game released a decade later. Assuming it ever is released.

You get a like just for mentioning World of Xeen, though, honestly, I'd give you another like if I could for the awesomeness inherent in the rest of that post. Speaking of, I'd love to see an LP of Swords (EDIT: Clouds, rather) and Darkside... (hint, hint)

Dude, that's not their backs that they're slapping over there.

It is theoretically possible that such a thing could occur, I suppose. I hear that World of Xeen now works flawlessly, thanks to GOG. But why Swords of Xeen and Darkside of Xeen, rather than Clouds and Darkside?

Ah. I meant Clouds and Darkside, actually; I misspoke. That said, a mini-LP of Swords could be interesting, as I don't think I've seen it LP'd before (though that may be for a good reason - I honestly don't know).

Well, it was never sold as a standalone product anywhere, ever. I don't even know where or how you'd get it, today.

It's included in the GOG packs, isn't it?

Ahh. Figures. It's honestly not a huge deal though, I'd be happy to see an LP of just Worlds of Xeen. Honestly, I just think we need another LP of a 'retro' RPG to balance out the sheer 'wut' that is Grimore. And you'd be guaranteed tons of likes!

Speaking of LP's... Meserach, you're doing a great job at showing us the *glory* of this demo so far. I don't even need to play it myself, and for that, I'm infinitely thankful!
...No, seriously. I mean that. I'm the kind of gamer that loves playing 'niche' or 'obscure' titles.... but I'm pretty sure I'd have binned this 5 minutes in, assuming I could even get it to boot.

What's sad is that there's actually potential here if you're looking for a Wizardry 7 clone. I was able to squint my eyes enough to see past Phil Fish and enjoy Fez, but I don't know if I'll be able to do the same with Grimoire.

Wizardry VII is probably a more apt example, since World of Xeen is old-school, but also kind of lightweight.

Or the most amazing game ever created in that genre, on the Amiga: Fate Gates of Dawn

Let me fish some old screenshots...





This is the gameworld (obviously excluding cities, interiors and dungeons), consider that every single pixel is exactly one square space:



Despite it has a number of flaws, it's also FULL of absolutely amazing features. Like the possibility to build FOUR parties up to seven characters each (that you recruit in the world). And then scatter those parties around the world jumping from one to the other.

I also found the review on youtube that shows the game better:

In the comments some people say they finished the game, ranging from 140 to 160 hours.

To me it sounds like you are confusing role-playing with roll-playing, but I might be wrong.

Isn't that pretty much the definition of pixel?

I thought he was confusing role-playing games with simulation games, but same idea.

On Codex I saw this post and thought it was fucking hilarious:

Wait bro, did you just give him your system specs so he could figure out why initiating combat with some fish at a pond in a game this complicated causes a game freeze? lolwut

I have no doubt that you deliberately steered the conversation into a direction in which you could once again mention that game that nobody cares about and no sane person finished.

Fuckin' A.

Technically, the last Xeen game was released two decades ago. And now you feel old.

Real CRPG veterans remember the CGA days, when men were men and the guards at Lord British's castle were little white icons that would move towards my little white icon after I stole something. *THIEVING SCUM!*

BTW, why does Grimoire have an automap? Hello, a CRPG is not a CRPG if it doesn't involve a lot of graph paper and good quality pencils. I wish I'd kept those from Bard's Tale or the first Might & Magic. I remember how much it would suck if I goofed it and the whole level ended up out of sync.

They're not slapping anything. If you pay attention, you'll notice that they are brofisting one another.

I remember that we had a dot-matrix printer that would print graphics (not all printers would in 1985), so I mapped all the dungeons in Ultima 4 for my friends by going into them, using the gem that reveals the level map, and then print-screening them. I suspect we cost my dad hundreds of dollars in printer ribbon and fanfold paper.

Also nobody here actually said any of those things.

The original SimCity used to allow you to print maps of your cities. You could do either a single-page map or basically a full-size map.. I used to print the big ones (they'd take up multiple pages) and then glue them together and hang them from the walls of the computer room. So awesome.

Well, now you can print four maps to a page. Convenient! ;)

I look at these screenshots and I try to keep an open mind, because I can see how closely he's trying to stick to the Wizardry VII model. And I played through and enjoyed Wiz 7 just last year. So I downloaded it and gave it a shot - it crashed six times in 10 minutes. He also managed to outdo the Wiz 7 UI in obtuseness, which is a feat. Oh well.

It's a shame, because Wizardry seems like the only 80s/90s RPG franchise that hasn't gotten a decent retro clone in the past decade. Bard's Tale had Devil Whiskey for PC and Silversword for iOS, Dungeon Master has Legend of Grimrock, Might and Magic had Undercroft on iOS, Ultima has the Jeff Vogel games (similar in mechanics, if not story). The Gold Box games I guess didn't get retro clones, but they certainly got spiritual successors in the Infinity Engine games, and NWN. Then of course there's the Elder Scrolls which we shouldn't forget started as a contemporary to Wiz 7.

I haven't had any performance or crashing problems in my play as covered in the LP above to date, although it should be noted I am genuinely running it on Windows XP, because my computer is old (well, a patchwork of very old and somewhat old components). It appears that Grimoire really is just too good for this fallen modern world.

Yeah, I assume the issue is that I'm running Win7 64-bit.

ARGH FUCK YOU NOW IT'S STUCK IN MY HEAD.

Now I just want to play the Gold Box games on my iPad.

You know what old school RPG I fucking loved back in the day? The Realms of Arkania games. Unless Grimoire has boots that can wear out, followed by characters stepping on sharp objects with their bare feet, followed by them contracting tetanus, followed by lockjaw, followed by death, then it's not hardcore at all. Fucking pretender.

my very first RPG on my 486 was a realm of arkania game(Star Trail)...this is before I played any type of old RPG, it wasn't a fun experience.

That's because you're not hardcore enough. I think some of the toughest parts of the game, aside from the ridiculous list of stats and skills, is the stuff that you have to keep on top of during overland travel, like shoes wearing out, or falling sick, or diseases steadily worsening - that kind of stuff. Also, dozens of hours into the game, "blindness" was pretty much still the most useful spell your mages could cast.

Commander Keen didn't prepare me for how awesome RPG is!!!

Really, the only ones I'd like to revisit for sure would be Dark Queen of Krynn and Pools of Darkness. But I would like that a lot.

It's been so long that they flow together for me, but I'm sure you're right. Rose coloured glasses and all that.