Preview: SkullStone (PC) ~ More Oldschool Dungeon Crawler Fun!

Official website

It’s time for something completely different. This week, I’ll take a look at a game that is still in development and doesn’t have a demo yet. The fine folks over at Black Torch Games sent me a request to take a look at their upcoming game SkullStone. It’s a dungeon crawler. I have played a lot of dungeon crawlers. I have also written articles about some of them. Like Etrian Odyssey, Venture Forth, Delver and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. If you want to know more about the genre and gameplay style  Wikipedia has a great article on it. As usual, feel free to leave a comment with your opinion on the game and/or the article. 

Wanna see the game in action?

On their YouTube channel, you can find various videos where they show off the content of the game. They already released one of the tracks of the soundtrack in the game. If this is an indication of the quality of the soundtrack, I think I might add the whole soundtrack to my library. Seriously, it gives off the right mood for an adventure down in the dungeon.

But on their YouTube channel, they show off early content. Remember, the game is still under development. But, I honestly think that what’s shown so far is amazing. I honestly can’t wait to get my hands on it. 

So, what do we know so far? Well, the introduction of the story. And it goes like this:

The people of Deepkar send for help. Evil creatures spew from the ancient structure – Skullstone – which appeared in the forests. Killing men, snatching women and children – they bring terror to the hearts of good people. Heroes are needed to deal with the growing threat once and for all… But reality is there are no heroes in this world. All of those who came here to aid people of the Deepkar village in their struggle won’t do it for just a few words of appreciation. Money and treasures is what they want. And fame for some of them. They are mercenaries and this is yet another great opportunity to earn a coin.

Choose among 20 characters, each with different set of skills and abilities, ready to fulfil different roles in your party. Healers, offensive and defensive magicians, front-row fighters – you name it. Build your team according to your play style.

This is going to be very interesting. I think the story of the game will be about a town that’s in dire need of help but doesn’t want help from adventures. Since they despise adventures for their greed and lust for fame. So, I’m curious. What will your characters be? One of many that are going to try and prove themselves or mercenaries? We will know when the full game releases!

From the FAQ page from their website, we also learn that this game will mostly focus on combat. But not only that, it will have exploration and puzzles. I’m a bigger fan of the puzzle and exploration aspect, but if the game has interesting battle mechanics, I’m down for a fun time as well.

Also, from looking at the videos and the screenshots on Twitter and Facebook, I think the game looks great already. For such a small team working on this game, it looks amazing. Only the animations should be polished a bit more, but to be fair, they said in the videos that they are working on that, so I’m not worried about that.

The only thing that isn’t clear to me are the controls. So far, I only see that the mouse can be used to control the game. I hope that in the finished product, you will be able to use more than only your mouse and bind all or most actions to a button on the keyboard.

Wishes for the full game

I have looked at the press material, YouTube videos and through various social media posts; and I have some suggestions or wishes for the final version of the game.

#1 – Something I love from Etrian Odyssey is the fact that you can add notes to your map. I think that would be a great feature in this game. Like, you buy a scroll in town and you can put it on the wall to help guide you or when you need to go back to that spot when you retrieved a certain item.

#2 – A difficult mode without a map. Since this game took inspiration from old school dungeon crawlers, I think it would be an amazing feature if you don’t have a map in-game. That way you have to either draw your own map or try to remember it all. But, I would make it an optional difficulty, since not every player would be down for that.

#3 – Randomise! Well, this is a very tricky one. At one hand, I’m hoping for the game to tell a big story with a well-crafted dungeon like in Orcs & Elves. But on the other hand, I’m also hoping for something like Delver. I think a fine compromise would be a challenge mode where you go into a randomized dungeon with the most difficult enemies in the game in the most tricky situations.

I think I would get a lot more ideas to suggest as soon as the game or the demo releases. So, they would blow my mind if they implement one of these features. Or if they are already implemented or on the “planned list”.

Details

So, the game will only release on Windows PC. The game release date will be later this year. The developer told me that this game won’t have a certain target audience so everyone will be able to enjoy it!

If you want to follow the development of the game, you can do that using these links:

• Our website – http://skullstonegame.com/
• Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/SkullstoneGame/
• Twitter – https://twitter.com/skullstonegame
• Steam Concepts – http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=484818958
• IndieDB – http://www.indiedb.com/games/skullstone

Also, the developer told me they are going to send me a copy of the game when it’s released. So, you will also see a review of the game right here!

I think I said everything I wanted to say about this game. I urge you guys and girls to check this game out. Keep an eye on it, since I think it has quite a lot of potential.

Thank you for reading my article on the upcoming game SkullStone. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article on my blog but until then… have a great rest of your day and take care!

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Rant: First Impression: The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures (PC/Steam) ~ Major Letdown.

Steam Store link

As a big fan of online video of gaming like AVGN, I was really looking forward to a game of him. When I pre-ordered it on Steam, I tried to not hype myself up. This way I could go in with an open mind as possible. And when I saw that one of the YouTubers I follow posted a screenshot on his Facebook fan page, I knew the game released earlier than it was planned. And man, that’s maybe what the letdown of this game is. Perhaps I don’t get the humor that hold up this game, but this game has various flaws that really break the game for me and make it a whole let less fun. I’m even doubting if this is a game, rather than an ode to James Rolfe. With the game next to me, I’m going to do the article in a sort of “First Impression” style. But list it under rants. Let me as a Neko Nerd rant about this will ya?

Overload of AVGN.

I wouldn’t be surprised that many people will disagree with me and like this game. But hey, let me remind you that opinions differ. I might hate a game you like. But let me know in the comments what your thoughts are on this article and the game. The first issue that I have with the game is the terrible scripting.

If this is a game to honor the work of James Rolfe, I think they made a serious design flaw. But it was a difficult thing to do. Do you make a terrible game like the one James always reviews? Or do you make a great game with terrible games in it? They went for the last option but clearly, the execution is more leaning to the first.

I get that James is sucked into a shitty game, but that doesn’t excuse the  overuse of bad words that public television has to censor. Each one-liner is in this game. And without the voice of James Rolfe to give it character, the annoyance factor kicks in fast.

The first issue is already present at the option screen. This option screen is terrible to work with. Also, this game doesn’t offer any setting to customize your keyboard settings. And the lay-out is laughable. It’s a shame to admit that I have an AZERTY keyboard and I promise you, the lay-out of the keys makes the game even harder than it’s already now.  In addition to that, I have something to nitpick. “Clear Save DataX”. What in the name of game design is that “X” doing there? And why are the stats on that same page? -Sigh- This is going to be harsh.

Unpleasant feelings

It didn’t take long, or I finished the tutorial level. One thing I have to give this game credit for is the fact that this game is wonderful with its source material. But like I mentioned before, they gone way too much overboard.

Graphically, the immersion in the game isn’t really working. While this game gives off an 8/16 bit vibe, the exploding enemies and various other animations are more modern. Also, many things are changed as a reference towards a review of James.

This game is extremely difficult. I love myself some challenge, and I often play a platformer, but this game just isn’t my slice of cake. You barely have any room to move around or carefully plan your strategy. Everything goes way too fast. And the instant death blocks are just a pain in the ——! There are ways to many of them.

There is something I like though is the music. The is extremely well done. I love the soundtrack to this game and in some levels I even want to rip it from the game and put it in my music library. And the sound effects and all that are pretty great too.

But then I go back to the other stuff. While the controls are pretty responsive, the pause menu is a bit frustrating. When you open the menu, you can continue with the same button you opened it. But when you want to exit the level, you need to go to the option for it and press the action button instead of that menu opening key.

Dirty game

Be warned! There is a nudity level in this game. And it’s shamelessly using the games James reviewed in that one Atari episode. Playing it just made me feel unpleasant. Like the level design. It’s great yet way too full of enemies. Not clear which one you can kill and which ones you can’t.

And I was sometimes even able to kill an enemy and later in the same level, it couldn’t be killed. Like the bubbles. Well, that brings me to a major level design flaw in this game. This might maybe be just me but remember what I said about overdoing it? Well, the levels are named after some popular reviews of AVGN. That’s great. Just, you see more Mario type things suddenly appearing in a Castlevania level? What happened here? A game cross over?

Another plus is that the game doesn’t go back to the desktop when I clicked here on my browser to continue writing the review. I’m so glad they added that feature.

Also, I’m disappointed in the fact that everything is a platform level. At least, every 10 levels I played. There are other characters, but I have yet to unlock them. And I haven’t used the power-ups since I barely find them. Possibly that’s because I’m playing on a certain difficulty. At least there is level selection and check points so that makes my pain a bit less hard to bear.

In conclusion, I can say this. This game is a mediocre game. It’s not worth the current price. Nearly 15 bucks is a bit too high. The game isn’t that good quality for that. A price like 7,5 would be way better. This game needs some polishing. Like adjustable controls and a revision of the level design. Is a worth a play? Yes, it’s not terrible, I’m enjoying it, but even with the low expectations, I’m disappointing. I feel that they could have done a lot more than what is in the game. It feels lacking in terms of content. Since it’s only platforming. Also, the high difficulty might be a turn-off to some. But I’m sure that the nudity level is one of the biggest turn-offs! There is nothing wrong with nudity but a whole level and presented like that is just overboard.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this little rant of mine. I’ll do my best to finish and beat this game, so I can fully review it. But this game’ll not be beaten soon since I have a minor disliking for it like shown. But I’m starting to add to something I finished. Jonez out.