The Darkness Below

hey, thanks ;)

yes, there's kinda a hunger system; if you don't rest (either at a tavern or via camp), the party gets "exhausted" which pretty much halves party's efficiency. Then you need to rest, which is where the party eats as well.

Nobody's dies if you don't rest, but there's no other way to restore spell points (although you can heal through other means and reverse exhaustion, but that will a few spell slots which you may not have)

Hey,

Apologies for the late reply ;)
thank you for the support and for your good words!

Yeah, this game is all about having a retro crpg gameplay experience, while respecting and borrowing stuff from the legendary old titles of the past, but also adding a few touches from my own vision and ways that I would like to play the genre. I am glad this seems to be liked by quite a few players so far :)

Yeah, I have some feedback already about custom portrait and typing a custom name as well, along with your now, somewhat high in my list. I will consider the best way to deal with this in time, no worries.

Thanks again!

Hey, 
thanks a lot :)

It only gets better from now on, for sure ;)

Hmm that's a first, do you have any steps to reproduce this?

The only way I can think of is when the item hold on mouse, it has bogus data. I think I solved such a bug, but if you have a save.dat or steps to reproduce this, would be great (through the new version though, as lots of things happened since)

Thanks!

Hey,

thanks for the bug report! I thought all these were fixed already :( I'll try to reproduce that and fix it for good. By default cleric, you mean a "prebuilt" cleric from character creation, right?

Thanks!

Hey thanks, I appreciate that you liked this one so far :)

Actually, I have already setup some trainers for weapons and armor. There's a trainer for 'Leather armor' in Silkmoor and also a 'Short blade' almost next to her, in the same village :) These will allow you to wear leather armor and use small blades like daggers and short swords i.e.

Although, it wouldn't be good to put all kind of trainers in one village and one town. There will be more skills as well and more civilised areas with trainers.

Regarding the more details about items, spells and all that, it's something I may need to consider. Since I am after M&M 3-5 and EOB, I really don't like to modernise things too much. Copied the feedback though and will revisit it again, I could perhaps on what's already there.

Regarding the sounds and music, yeah its something that bothers me as well sometimes. I might rework all sound work so far, especially event music.

What's in my full game? well, the basic premise of the game was / still is to provide a very long single-based game, with tons of maps, lore, items, side quests and lots of puzzles and riddles, along with a major quest which is basically explained in the intro. Not AI, not super deep stories and generally modern stuff. Just the grinding single-based cRPGing experience of the past (M&M 3-5) and exploration / D&D based puzzling (EOB). I have put another screenshot in the list on right column of the world map to realise the length of the final game ;)

Thanks again for the purchase!

right, bug is fixed. I had to rework the save system a bit, fixing a few other bugs as well :) I will upload a fixed version today, I will inform you.

thanks =)

yes, its the "prelude" version only, that means a version with about all the major fixes and functionality and about ~3 hours of the main game's content. A "short" release of sorts.

it's a kind of early-access for itch.io, which however its fully playable; I mean, this is how the full release will start about. A version for anyone wanting to play in its current state.

happy new year =)

Hey :)

Yes, I am going to publish this very shortly. It could be even a matter of hours, although I have some work left. Thanks for your lovely words :) Yeah, I am after these games, their atmosphere and mechanics, as well as M&M but also infusing it with my own things. I just love their raw approach on D&D world, cutscenes and their huge graphics.

I liked the first Legend of Grimrock because it was quite close to EOB1 and DM. I mostly like to play games with similar atmosphere and (lower) technology to my own, Grimoire, The Quest, Legends of Amberland etc.

Not really interested in very modern takes, because I feel there's a lot of copy/pasting of the LOG formula, over and over again. Even M&M X tried to capitalise on that, sadly. Very few games ended being good enough compared to LOG, one of them being "Dungeon Kingdom: Sign of the Moon" and I heard good stuff about "Operencia" but never played it.

However, I much prefer to play Lands of Lore or watching some Dungeon Hack walkthroughs or even reading D&D modules, rather playing modern cRPGs these days :) I guess this keeps me close to this kind of games after all these years.

Yep, it takes first and foremost heart, soul but also a lot of persistence for the years that will take you to make a game. There's still so much more that I would like to add to the game but I feel its time to show a thing or three of what the game looks like now, a "prelude" of sorts of what is coming =)

Hey, sorry for the late reply :)

Thanks a lot for still following this. Well, the game should have been already released but recently I gave it for thorough playtesting and I am still working on the enormous feedback I got from the people that played it, well, along with some bugs or five :)

I am not good with ETAs and stuff but what is left for now is adding one last level / map for the game to have a proper "mini" closure, a chapter of sorts, since the demo didn't had one.

And there are still some minor stuff to address, more like annoyances that need to be eliminated. There have been a lot of changes while I was designing the last version, which only got worse after the playtesting :)

So, yeah, this will be a demo no more, it will be more like a short cRPG that will last a couple hours, more closer to what the full game will look like in the end than previous demo.

Yeah, I posted this update on dungeoncrawlers discord for now. If you see major update there, or facebook or rpgcodex, then the game will be already published on itch.io (at first), so keep an eye, mostly in this month ;)

Thanks :)

Hi simonschreibt

Thanks for the comment.

No worries at all, this issue has long been fixed in new (and last) v1.2 demo. In addition, a window and a letterbox mode were added to support these large resolutions / monitors, without losing the original aspect ratio i.e. no stretching.

New v1.2 (demo) build has been already playtested and already working on last bits, expect it in few days with tons of improvements and original content :)

Hey man, thanks for playing the demo. Yep, its not the most balanced demo ever, so those low-level knights can't get past through goblin protection, especially those carrying low-damage weapons such as clubs. Better choose a wizard-oriented party on this one, since spells hit on resistances directly so you definitely do some damage :) Try to rest only when the spells are running out to save your remaining food as well (no taverns in demo either). The coming release is vastly superior to all these issues. Glad that you're liking it so far!

Hey man, thanks a lot :) I appreciate that and your patience as well :)

Yes, the character creation is already in place and will be in the version to come.

Hey, thanks for the nice game play man :)
The real thing comes nicely in late 2022 and  it's a lot improved!

Thanks man :)

It will only take a few months to get this out, probably late 2022, for certain Windows & Linux.

Android needs a few tweaks, UI, sdk versions and restrictions and all that that lovely Playstore now requires from us. Hopefully I will deal with that in proper time.

Thanks for your patience and interest!

The character's development is a very special procedure that I pay a lot of attention to and this alone takes time. It's the deciding factor for the game's length and depth. The current approach (prebuilt characters) is but a glimpse of it, a middle ground solution that allows a demo for now.

However, the current issues of the game are taking the priority at the moment; character creation, content, polishing etc. comes in second.

Hey, thanx man!
I'm glad that you liked this short demo, more to come for sure :)

I appreciate for taking the time providing the feedback, they're extremely helpful to fine-tune the game and trimming down the annoyances. There's only so much that can be done when you're solo :)

• Quicker Turns. Yeah, I've already been provided with a number of feedbacks about the slow times on combat and it's already on my fix list, pretty high for that matter.
• Retreat. I've to think about that & check my dusty D&D library for a good & intuitive way to handle that :) Not any promises though.
• Hotkeys. Worry not! This is what I'm currently implementing. The game can also be played by WASD+QE plus F5/F9 for quick save/load (at the moment; more keys to add for a smoother mouseless experience). Those keys can be changed as well through game settings and saved.
• Bug. Great! Its on way to fix.

That was a super helpful feedback and I already copied it to my pile of things to kill! Expect a number of these to be addressed by the next update. Thanx!

Thanks! I hope you find the demo good as well. It's still a work in progress on every level. There will be a couple more updates to iron out a number of recent issues.

That doppleganger is a curveball! I am curious how your engine puts together the 2.5D scenes and does transitions and turns. I really like it. I notice my wizard will NEVER level up his dagger skill; he's not skilled enough in it to ever hit even the weakest enemies, which means he never gains any skill experience from inflicting damage, which means it will never gain a rank, which means he will never hit even the weakest enemies. :/
Overall, a fun experience!