Saturday, July 07, 2007
Early Look at the DROD RPG
Adam Peterson and Mike Rimer were gracious enough to show the Utah Indie Night folks an early build of the new RPG under construction at Caravel Games. Based on both the "Deadly Rooms of Death" (DROD) engine and universe, it is tentatively entitled either "DROD Origins" or "DROD Beginnings" - they are still kicking the name around. Adam referred to it as more of a "strategy / RPG" - it borrows several trappings of RPGs to add some variety to the DROD experience.
The game looks, at first blush, like just another Deadly Rooms of Death game (and if you've never tried them, you can try out a free demo of DROD: Journey to Rooted Hold here). Except that there's a stats window which includes Beethro's hit points, attack and defense scores, money (I think it was called "Greckles"), and equipment.
The gameplay is fully deterministic, just as in the other DROD games. No randomness is involved, which actually kinda breaks my personal definition of an RPG. Monsters are largely static, though a couple of them do move around. The end result is that the game, like the earlier DROD games, is still firmly rooted into puzzle-game territory. The gigantic difference being that there are always multiple solutions to most puzzles, and much of what constitutes an "optimum" solution for you might depend upon decisions you've made much earlier in the game. Do you have tons of keys? Using a key to get into a room might be the best solution. If you are low on keys but have plenty of hit points to burn, your best solution may be to fight the monster to get into the room. Unlike other RPGs, "grinding" is of little value --- this game is more about resource management.
The movement and gameplay should be very familiar to DROD veterans. You still move around and position your sword (if you have one - you can fight monsters with your fists in the early stages of the game) as in previous DROD games. Most gear in the game has strengths and weaknesses, so there isn't a single "best" weapon for all situations. Also, the game doesn't conveniently place a number of keys equal to their appropriate doors - you may have to choose which doors to open, which to bypass through other tricks, and which to skip.
The monsters in the DROD RPG are, as mentioned earlier, mainly stationary, acting as barriers rather than characters. You have to choose to engage them --- usually. Their behaviors are suggested by their equivalent monster types in earlier DROD games, but since most lack movement they are not exact. For example, the floating eye always attacks first if you attack it in the direction it is facing, but you can get a free hit or two in if you attack it from another angle. The goblin will attack you if you turn your back on it. You can click on the monster to examine not only their stats, but the projected damage you will receive if you fight it at your current attack & defense levels.
Like the other games in the series, it will be releasing with full level-creation tools. Considering the rabid fan base these games already have, I expect there will be near-unlimited player-created smite potential for this game when it ships.
Naturally, the Caravel Games guys were pretty unsure of this game's eventual release date. They jokingly said "By the end of the year" or "On April Fool's Day," but then added that they weren't going to state WHAT year they were talking about. The engine is done, and the demo episode is completed, but they still have a lot of tweaking and balancing to complete.
After playing it for a few minutes, I was overwhelmed mainly by how much the game felt like another DROD game, in spite of breaking such new ground for the series. There is no question in my mind that this game is meant for fans of the series, and Caravel Games developers are creating something very focused on the desires of their audience. If you like Deadly Rooms of Death, you will likely enjoy the DROD RPG. If you don't like the series, this game is unlikely at this point to change your opinion. But if may prove to be a great entry-point into the series for new fans.
(Vaguely) related smiting of the English language:
* But Is It An RPG?
* Are Hybrid RPGs Just Poor-Man's RPGs?
* Journey to Rooted Hold
* Utah Indie Developer Night, Summer 2007
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Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:04 AM (Permalink)
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I certainly hope they're careful, because that sounds a lot like this one game called "Tower of the Sorceror" (look for it on Gamehippo or something). It's a creative, decent-length game with a similar design idea to that (but without the sword thing), and I'd probably recommend seeing the whole thing once if you have time--going through it step by step with a thorough guide telling you whether or not and when to fight every single enemy. The game is entirely a matter of trial and error otherwise, a very long trial and error where early mistakes could mean eventual ruin. There's absolutely no way of telling without either guessing or cheating via guide what resource is more important at a given junction, since you can't see what's ahead and even if you could I couldn't plan that far myself. Worse, it has items, features and special surprises that, while cool ideas, serve to make not using a guide even more futile, such as the item later on that doubles all gold drops but wasn't hinted at by anything earlier (and to top it off, you have to experiment with a one-use non-renewable item without any real guidance to find it), so if you went through and happily mopped up all the free gold as soon as you could kill an enemy type without taking any damage you'll suddenly be denied a lot of extra gold; or the enemy later on that cuts your health in half, doing the same thing to health potions, also never alluded to until you reach level 40 or something. On top of that, the altars where you trade gold for boosted stats throw a multiplier on their effect the higher in the tower they are, so if you wait to spend it early on you'll get twice the effect later if the health you didn't save in combat inbetween doesn't kill you. That game would have benefitted so much from a checkpoint after every boss that automatically set all your stats including gold and health to a specific value and automatically wiped out everything you'd passed (in other words, wiping the slate clean and giving you a level playing ground in the next set of levels no matter what you did before) that it isn't even funny.
# posted by 
: July 08, 2007 10:17 PM
: July 08, 2007 10:17 PM
I just want to say, about Tower of the Sorcerer, that there were clues about the Lucky Gold, a merchant told you about it, and there was a slightly hidden message saying "Go 0F" telling you where it was. All the other stuff is true though.
OH THAT'S what that message was supposed to be. I had no idea WHAT that thing was supposed to say. But yeah, I just forgot about the merchant, though I'm sure there was plenty of time to waste future gold before his hint anyways.
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# posted by : July 09, 2007 10:17 AM
: July 09, 2007 10:17 AMLinks to this post:
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