Saturday, November 17, 2007
Eschalon: Book 1 First Impressions
RPG Watch has posted their first impressions on Eschalon: Book 1, the "old-school" indie RPG scheduled to be released on Monday. They go into a lot of detail on the game system in general, though the author hasn't gotten too far into the game yet.
Some nifty tidbits:
"Dungeons so far have been reasonably complex affairs with lots of switches, traps and locked doors. A particular feature of Eschalon dungeoneering is dealing with the dark – without a torch or other light source it’s literally pitch black... speaking of the dark, rogues and similar characters get a lot of love with skills such as pick locks, skulduggery (traps), find hidden, move silently, hide in shadows and dodge. Quests yield far more experience than combat, so using the shadows to slip past monsters is a valid approach or together with a Cat’s Eyes potion, the darkness can be used to great effect to attack enemies who suffer a big penalty with no light."
Ah, that warms my roguely heart!
And overall, the impression seems to be very favorable:
"Eschalon is a welcome return to classic stat-based CRPG gameplay, with crisp graphics reminiscent of Arcanum and a presentation quality that sets a new standard for indie roleplaying games. Despite some question marks over the combat, we can’t wait to delve further into the game for a full review but in the meantime, grab the demo when it is released on the 19th and prepare to be hooked."
Read Eschalon: Book 1 First Impressions at RPG Watch
Oh, and you can download the free demo here.
Labels: Indie Evangelism, Roleplaying Games
- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:36 AM (Permalink)
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Wow! Stat based, turn based, and isometric. This game looks incredible. The artwork is one of my new envies. :-) They have layed these terrains out beautifully. They promise freedom of character development. I can already tell by the screen that I will be creating and testing several characters before taking off in this game.
Can't wait. :-)
Can't wait. :-)
I wonder how hard it is to come up with a mechanism to award experience for simply "getting past" an enemy, whether beating them up, sliding by undetected, or trapping/capturing them.
@John
You know, I have been wondering that same thing. It could be as simple as a range check, and do something similar to gui mouse programing. Character enter range, sneaking begins, character exit range, character gets experience for non-detection. There would also need to be a log to tell what enemies have already been snuck behind, and time it so it will reset eventually for more experience.
I guess more exp would need to be rewarded for harder sneaks, and sneaks that get even closer into range of the enemy.
You know, I have been wondering that same thing. It could be as simple as a range check, and do something similar to gui mouse programing. Character enter range, sneaking begins, character exit range, character gets experience for non-detection. There would also need to be a log to tell what enemies have already been snuck behind, and time it so it will reset eventually for more experience.
I guess more exp would need to be rewarded for harder sneaks, and sneaks that get even closer into range of the enemy.
You'd need to be very careful with that to make sure its not repeatable - otherwise it becomes exploitable.
From a philisophical standpoint, I don't know if the experience points (XP) should be any higher or lower based upon how much risk the PLAYER assumes. I remember arguing with friends about this back in junior high when they'd maintain that if you were clever and dropped an avalanche on a hydra, it shouldn't be worth as much XP as getting into a fight with it.
My feeling (again, the roguely side of me coming through) was that if you killed it via cleverness, it shouldn't be worth any fewer points than taking a stupid (and expensive / dangerous) brute-force approach.
It sounds like in Eschalon, they've simply dropped the XP value of killing monsters to the point where it's more "bonus XP" rather than the primary source of XP.
From a philisophical standpoint, I don't know if the experience points (XP) should be any higher or lower based upon how much risk the PLAYER assumes. I remember arguing with friends about this back in junior high when they'd maintain that if you were clever and dropped an avalanche on a hydra, it shouldn't be worth as much XP as getting into a fight with it.
My feeling (again, the roguely side of me coming through) was that if you killed it via cleverness, it shouldn't be worth any fewer points than taking a stupid (and expensive / dangerous) brute-force approach.
It sounds like in Eschalon, they've simply dropped the XP value of killing monsters to the point where it's more "bonus XP" rather than the primary source of XP.
I should think it would be easy to make it non-repeatable, the same way you prevent pickpockets treating peasants as infinite gold mines: each monster/entity would have a certain amount of XP for getting past it. Once you've gotten past it, it has no more XP for that -- just like once you've picked its pocket, it has no more gold.
If you want, you could even punish someone for trying to use them as an XP mine: take away the XP they earned for getting past the enemy if they screw up trying to get past him again.
@code ugly
That gives me an interesting idea: what if some enemies give you different amounts of experience for getting past them than for beating them in combat? Rats, for example, are easy to smack around, but very hard to sneak by undetected.
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If you want, you could even punish someone for trying to use them as an XP mine: take away the XP they earned for getting past the enemy if they screw up trying to get past him again.
@code ugly
That gives me an interesting idea: what if some enemies give you different amounts of experience for getting past them than for beating them in combat? Rats, for example, are easy to smack around, but very hard to sneak by undetected.
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