Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land

I got very excited when I heard about Call of Cthulhu: The Wasted Land, which is a game set firmly in the world of  HP Lovecraft - an American writer from the 1920s and 30s who wrote short stories about Old Gods, unspeakable horrors and lands beyond dreams.  He was obsessed with madness, with things living in the shadows of our perception which hate humanity with an intensity that is inconceivable to our mortal minds; powerful, ancient, horrific things determined to destroy our world and everything in it.  You can see why I was excited.

The game itself is a turn-based strategy game; much like Xcom (or, indeed, X-Com), Fire Emblem or Advance Wars.  Each side take turns moving all of their "pieces", and action points determine how much each character can do during those turns.  Moving, attacking or using items all costs a specified number of points and once your characters have used all of these up then it's time for the other side to have a go.  There are no time limits on how long you can take to plan out your moves, you can think for as long as you like, and so this kind of game is well suited to playing on the go.

You control a team of up to 6 characters, some of whom have to survive each mission whilst others are a bit more expendable, and they all have varied skills and attributes.  There are different weapon skills which determine how effective you are with the different weapon types (handguns, shotguns, rifles, machine guns and stabby things), there are skills which govern healing or being able to put a gas mask on properly and there's even a "psychotherapy" skill - because first world war trenches are apparently an ideal place for a bit of person-centred counselling.

In addition to this characters can also use different equipment such as weapons, armour or the ubiquitous first aid boxes.  All of these can also be upgraded later in the game, although there is only one stronger variant for each type of weapon which is a little bit disappointing.  On the other hand there are four different types of armour, various spells and the Sapper can even call in artillery – so there’s a fair amount of options available to you. 

The Wasted Land is split into 11 different tactical missions, with some basic exposition in between, and pits the player against an evil German cult determined to bring the Old Gods back to Earth so that they can destroy humanity and enable a new world to rise from the ashes (Mwuahaha!).  Not the greatest or wisest plan I've ever heard but you know, cultists gonna cult.  Your team, on the other hand, are a nice mix of down to earth Tommies "Crikey! That chap's already dead!" and more mysterious blighters like the extravagantly turbaned Professor Brightmeer.  The action is set across the trenches, no man's land and destroyed churches of First World War France but with Lovecraftian elements added in.  So your characters can cast spells, encounter nasty slobbering monsters or be driven stark raving mad by the horrors they experience.  Lovecraft was an amazingly creative writer and the story and setting is one of the best things about this game.  It uses this very well and it fits perfectly with the gritty realities of trench warfare.  If I wanted to be pretentious I could talk about how the lines of reality are already blurred when man can be so brutal to his fellow man - but it certainly allows for the supernatural to gradually take over the story in a way that might seem jarring elsewhere.  The difficulty level is reasonable, I didn't have many problems in completing it apart from one particular issue which I'll talk about later and money isn't plentiful to the point of being meaningless but still allows you to buy upgrades for your stuff.

It's a strong fashion statement

However it's not all ballgowns, tiaras and the reawakening of primordial forces who should have been left to their eternal slumber.  The game did, admittedly, stand up to some of my basic "is this a rubbish game?" tests (you can't call in artillery underground) but it also suffers from a number of actually quite important problems. To start with, let's look at the whole insanity thing.  In the original pen and paper RPG "Call of Cthulhu" your character had a Sanity attribute and every time they met up with something slimy they lost points from this until, eventually, they went irredeemably insane.  However, in Wasted Land madness is sometimes a good thing and while this may be striking a blow for mental health advocacy it also comes across as pretty contrived.  Here lots of things affect sanity - casting spells, attacking monsters, monsters attacking you etc. and once this gets to 0 you are either paralysed or go into a frenzy – during which you actually get lots more action points for a few turns before you collapse.  This is explained by Prof. Brightmeer teaching you some yoga or something which at least fits in with the milieu but still means that madness is just a temporary state of mind.  And, not only this, but you can be cured at any time by somebody psychoanalysing you - even in the middle of a gas-filled trench surrounded by the shambling dead.  Sanity is treated as just another health bar and it says a lot that in a game full of evil cultists, opponents from beyond the grave and indescribable horror this was the bit which stood out as unrealistic.

The tactics side of things also feels a bit light.  To start with, there are LOADS of enemies.  On some missions I was killing upwards of 60 opponents and this means that it all becomes a bit of a grind.  Most of them have to close to clawing range before doing any damage and so it can feel like you're shooting ducks at the fairground on occasion.  They shuffle towards you, you shoot the closest one, some more appear and repeat to fade.  That's not to say that it lacks challenge, you often have to think about how to manage the situation, but the endless array of attackers that pop up only to be quickly knocked back down can be wearing.  The enemy AI is also not great, and they will often walk straight through a gas cloud - killing themselves before you even get the chance to plunge a sharpened entrenching tool into their rotten chest. 

However the biggest, and almost game-breaking, problem I had with the Wasted Land was how enemies spawn.  There seem to be a number of trigger points on the map and once you reach those points then opponents appear.  The problem is that they appear at the start of their own turn, sometimes right next to you, and will often kill your characters without you being able to do anything about it.  This directly lead to me failing a couple of missions and was an immensely frustrating part of the game.  Eventually you come to expect it, and leave all your characters on opportunity fire to try and combat it, but it's still just really shoddy game design and shouldn't happen. 

So it's strange that, even though all of these problems undoubtedly exist and even though they were definitely really annoying I still quite enjoyed playing this game.   Now this may be because I was on public transport for a lot of it and the game's cast of shambling horrors and reanimated corpses were more enticing than what was actually around me.  It may also be that its turn-based, strategy-lite approach fitted perfectly with what I wanted from a game at that time but I admit that I had no strings attached, uncomplicated fun with it and that is something you should never, ever turn your nose up at.  I mean, the game costs £2.99 or something, the Professor's magnificent turban is worth that on its own.

The Wasted Land is available on iOS, Android and PC.  I played it on a Nexus 7.

Wisdom Tooth Extraction or Better Living Through Chemistry

A bit of one of my wisdom teeth cracked off a while ago and I went to see my dentist. She said I'd have to go to hospital to have it removed, which was a bit of a shock because I was expecting her to make a crown or something. But no, she was insistent.

I was shitting it.

This went on for a couple of months. I had to have a pre-assessment. They warned me that I might lose all the feeling in my jaw, they made me sign a waiver absolving them of blame if they accidentally drilled right through into my quivering brain. They (quite diplomatically) refused my abject, repeated and teary pleas to "just be knocked the fuck out" and said that they recommended "sedation". When I asked what, exactly, this meant they said that I would be aware and awake whilst they extracted the tooth but just very relaxed about it. I doubted this.

My family were great. My wife cheerily informed me that "you're going to look a right mess after this". And my 3 1/2 year old son loudly exclaimed "you're not even going to be able to eat BREAD!".

In a panic I called the person that every manly man would call in this situation, his mum. My mum, listened, she sympathised and then, glory of glories, she agreed to bring up 120 codeine tablets. Halle-fuckin-luia.

The big day arrived. I picked out a t-shirt that I didn't mind getting covered in blood. I removed all the loose coins from my pockets and i got on to the train with my responsible adult. I was not happy, I wondered if blood in your mouth is arterial, would there be a spurt as they yanked out the offending tooth? I wondered if the doctor would look like Steve Martin in Little Shop of Horrors. That train journey was horrible.

Welcome to my nightmares

Anyway, we arrived at King's and went up to the Oral Surgery department. It was like a scene from the Walking Dead. We saw a man being led out by his mum. He was shambling, there is no other word for it. Dead eyes, shuffleshuffle - I waved at him but there was no response.

They called my name. I left my escort outside and went in. My doctor introduced himself. I asked lots of questions. He said the sedative would feel like being really drunk, aware but unable to do anything. He said I would lose my memory of everything, possibly even that chat. He sat me down and said he was going to start the sedatives. I could hear the Fresh Prince over the radio "I walked up to the house about 7 or 8 and i yelled to the cabbie, yo homie, smell ya later!". I thought I could see everything going hazy, I could feel myself drifting off, I felt good, maybe this was going to be alright.

Nope, he hadn't even found a vein yet.

He apologised and tried again.  I could feel him sticking a plaster on to my hand to hold the needle in and so I knew this time he had been successful.  He asked me what I did for a living.... I have a vague memory of asking him if that was it and him saying yes. I was apparently loudly proclaiming the merits of benzos to the nurse as she wheeled me out and saying I might fuck up another tooth just to do it again. I kept taking the heart monitor off and repeated everything about 30 times. I have a big hole in my gum and a big tooth in a tissue but I remember nothing else.

When I got home I went to bed and slept for four hours. Yes I might not be able to eat an apple at the moment and I can't sign a legal document until 1pm this afternoon but it was actually almost a pleasant experience.

So.. what I am trying to say to you is that having a wisdom tooth out isn't as bad as all that, and that prescription drugs are the effing bomb. I don't know if some of you out there are like I was yesterday; shaking, sweating and embarrassing yourselves in public - you don't need to be.

It'll all be fine.

Rogue Legacy

On the face of it Rogue Legacy is nothing unusual.  It uses 8 bit graphics and sound to create a Castlevania-like platformer - not exactly revolutionary.  However, where this game differs from the norm is in the way it treats the player's family after their (almost) inevitable demise.  Yeah.  I said family.  Because in Rogue Legacy you don't just control one character, you control a dynasty.  A really messed-up dynasty (of hypochondriacs), at that.

There are two quite distinct parts to the game.  The first is a randomly generated platformer set in a castle (or forest or whatever). You jump about, kill monsters, open chests and meet a good selection of grisly ends.  However, what determines your abilities in this bit is how much of the other part you have unlocked.  And this, in turn, is determined by how much gold you earn with your dungeon-crawling exploits.  Each part feeds off, whilst also sustaining, the other - they're symbiotic, if you want to be all technical about it.

It's like Zen.... man...

However, none of this fancy stuff really matters if the game itself is rubbish.  It's all very well having an appreciation of novel structure but that isn't going to make things fun on its own.  So it's lucky that the action is pretty solid.  You explore a randomly generated castle (initially, with other areas coming later), and try to get as much gold as you can before dying.  You can run (sword held aloft and probably screaming "charge!"), jump, cast a spell or use a class-specific power (like negating damage or issuing a Skyrim-inspired shout), and there are, of course, the usual selection of nasty monsters arrayed against you.  There are chests to open, which contain a fair amount of loot, challenges to complete (to get even more loot) and bosses to kill (to get... well you can probably guess).  There's a good variety of rooms and obstacles to overcome and plenty of snap decisions have to be made on just what exactly is the best way of clearing a path.  Action is often quite frenetic, with the screen sometimes resembling a bullet-hell shooter and, certainly at the start, you will not last long.  It's all extremely reminiscent of Castlevania or Ghosts and Goblins, but this is no bad thing.

Now I'm sure that some of you are thinking "Hang on.  This game has 'Rogue' in its title and the levels are randomly generated.  This is (yet another) roguelike isn't it? And, correct me if I'm wrong, but death is usually permanent in a roguelike - so what's all this nonsense about families and loot?".  Right, well I'm glad you asked because you've led me perfectly into the next bit of the game.  The clever thing about Rogue Legacy is that, when you die, your son or daughter takes over your quest.  They get all of your earnings and all of your equipment and then they charge back into the fray.  And when they die the process continues with their offspring.  God, that's quite depressing actually isn't it?  Endless generations sent off to their inevitable destruction, all for an ultimately pointless goal.  Like the First World War, but with flying jawas.

Look!  A flying jawa!

Anyway, this is how it works.   Every time your character is killed you are presented with a choice of three different successors.  Each of these will be randomly given one of the classes you have unlocked and up to two of the game's extremely varied traits.  These range from the useful (ADHD, which means you move faster) through the mediocre (dwarfism, harder to hit but also less range with your sword) to the game-breakingly awful (vertigo, everything is upside down and back to front).  There are plenty in there just for laughs (IBS turns your character into a walking whoopee cushion) but the selection is wide enough to make each play through feel unique.

And the different classes also feel quite distinct, at least once the first few have been unlocked.  The early options are a bit uninspired, simply varying the attack power or the amount of hit points available, but later on they start to introduce different abilities which really influence how the player approaches the game.  Some character types are also clearly more powerful than others and the different combinations of class and trait can force you to make some difficult decisions about who to pick.  Is it better to have a miner with ADHD?  Or a Lich King with vertigo?  

Once you've chosen your character you are taken to the mansion, which you can now improve with the gold from your previous sortie into the castle.  The first person you employ is a blacksmith who uses blueprints found in the dungeon to create new equipment.  Once he has been installed then you can hire an Enchantress, who uses runes (again found in the dungeon) to add different powers to that equipment, or an Architect who can stop the castle regenerating - for a price.  Employing either of these opens up further options, new and improved classes or better stats and abilities, and paying for these creates new opportunities and so on and so forth.  Eventually the whole mansion has been unlocked and your characters are sufficiently strong to complete the game.

Now a lot of recent roguelikes have addressed the issue of progress in a genre where, traditionally, the player is forced to completely restart when they die. FTL had unlockable ships and ToME goes down a similar route with unlockable classes, races and everything else.  However, Rogue Legacy builds the entire game around this.  There is absolutely no chance of completing your quest with the starting character.  So, realistically, you will just be collecting gold in order to improve your manor for a long while.  On the other hand each character you create will have a better chance of getting further, which means it is almost impossible to resist having just one more go.  This is the kind of game where you think about going to bed at midnight and then suddenly it's 2am.

It isn't a roguelike in a traditional sense, death is a way of improving your chances not an end to them, but changing the structure of the game in this way is a really interesting twist.  You are now levelling up outside of any progress towards your stated goal.  In fact progress in the game only affects your character once they die and it passes on to their progeny.  This influences how you approach each run and can make you almost welcome death as it allows you to unlock another round of goodies.  I'm not sure I can think of another game that makes 'failure' as integral as this does and so it is laudable just for that alone.

There are, of course, things that could be done better.  To start with, some of the classes seem a bit redundant.  I'm yet to find a use for the mage, who doesn't do enough damage or have enough hit points to make them viable, or the miner, who gets a great bonus to the amount of gold they find but never lasts long enough to really use it.  And I have also noticed that because you lose (most) of your money when you go back into the castle and because the cost of most improvements go up exponentially, it is difficult to pursue a coherent build strategy.  You end up increasing most attributes by a small amount, rather than concentrating on one particular style - and this results in a pretty generalised bunch of heroes.

However, probably my main worry is that as you progress through the game the rewards become further and further apart.  The player has to spend longer in the castle in order to get enough gold to pay for the increasingly expensive improvements and so dying becomes more and more of a pain - despite the chance of actually completing anything remaining almost as remote as ever.  I suppose that this is unavoidable and the regular discovery of new classes does keep the player interested in progressing, but it is certainly something to be aware of.

So, bearing this in mind, does it all work?  Well, yes it does.  It's not massively complicated, and the action is solid, rather than spectacular, but the way that each part of the game depends on the other is a great idea and very well done.  It's original, it's quirky and it can be frustrating, but it's also a lot of fun; and, as I said above, it's the kind of game where the urge to have "just one more go" is really difficult to resist.   I'm not sure it will change your life - but it might just improve it a little bit.

Rogue Legacy is available on Steam and Good Old Games for about £12.

In Absentia

Hi.

Sorry there haven't been any new and exciting rogue-like based updates for a while.  My writing circuits have been de-commissioned by a combination of real life (huge disruption in our house due to quite major building works) and virtual life (I spend all the time when I'm not trying to make toast in a microwave obsessively playing Tales of Maj'Eyal) but I promise that I will power up the batteries again soon.

In the meantime... here is the test card....

Tales of Maj'Eyal

Gamers could be forgiven for being slightly world-weary at the moment, as they are forced to sit and watch their once-beloved hobby become an industry.  An industry in which publishers think it's OK to charge their customers £60 for something that doesn't work (and then lie to them by insisting that they have to connect to non-existent servers whilst doing it), or to release a game for £35 and then immediately ask for more money for different weapons (which should have been included anyway). It's enough to make a man turn to drink.

For example, look at Battlefield 3.  The game was released in November 2011 and cost £40-50 to buy.  After some time EA announced a load of downloadable content, and gave players the "chance" to gain access to it by paying another £40 up front for the "premium" version of the game.  What's more lots of people did this and there are now 2.9 million premium members - earning EA another $108 million in revenue.  Let's just go through that again. 3 million people happily paid twice for the game.  Well done EA.

In fact EA are the common factor in all of these examples (they publish Sim City 5, Dead Space 3 and Battlefield 3) but it would be a mistake to think that they are wholly responsible for this precipitous decline into micro-transactions, always-online DRM and money-grasping cynicism.  I mean, they are largely responsible and they're certainly the worst offenders, but they're not the only company who have come along to feast on your wallets.  Gaming is a big money thing these days and it attracts the same kind of shiny-suited and shiny-haired shysters who infest the rest of the known world, vacant soul-less incubi who look at something beautiful and can only see ways of milking every last drop of filthy lucre from it.

So it is with a profound sense of relief that I can report to you, dear reader, that there are still some good people out there, making games.  Tales of Maj'Eyal is a graphical roguelike (similar to Dungeons of Dredmor but without the facial hair), which has spent the last 15 years evolving into its current state and (whisper it) it's free.  In fact, not only is it free but the engine used to create the game is also available for other developers to use, as the whole project is open-source (so anybody can modify it or update it or play with it).  Now obviously a man has to eat so donations are encouraged, but they are strictly optional and left to the player's own integrity and honesty.   Donators are given extra things, like a unique character class or access to a vault in which to store items, but people who play for free are still able to access the whole game without any restrictions.  So there's a carrot but no stick, which makes a nice change from being treated like a pirate or an idiot or both.  How refreshing.

The game itself is pretty interesting.  Roguelikes seem to be all the rage at the moment (or maybe that's just in my little world) and TOME is a fine example.  It has its origins in ASCII based games such as Angband but it uses a tileset to make everything a bit more graphically pleasing and accessible and this commitment to accessibility is something which recurs  throughout the game.  If there's a part of you which has always wanted to try out something like this but you've been put off by the unrelenting difficulty and impenetrable interfaces then this may well be the roguelike for you.

Part of the reason for this, as already mentioned, is that the game doesn't rely on using ASCII symbols to portray its world (although the purists amongst you can still do that if you wish).  Instead things are presented clearly (if plainly) with pictures for different types of monsters - and trees, dungeons, mountains and so on.  Anything important (like an area's entrance) is usually marked with a sparkly effect until you use it and tooltips come up when you put your cursor over things to tell you what they are.  It may not be especially visually amazing but it gets the required information across and there is never any confusion about what is around you - a clarity which also extends to the interface.  Unlike some other, earlier, roguelike games most actions can be completed with just the mouse - no more trying to remember that q is for quaff and :s20 will search an area twenty times.  You can click anywhere on the screen and your character will move there automatically, you click on a monster to attack it and you select which skills to use and spells to cast by selecting graphical icons from a bar on the bottom of the screen.  You can even auto-explore an area, just press "z" and your character will happily delve away until they find something you need to know about.  It's all extremely user-friendly.

And TOME also softens some of a roguelike's traditional difficulty by giving the player more than the customary single life. Here your character gets extra chances as they increase in level and there are also items which can be used to resurrect them.  Again, if you are a purist you can choose for this not to happen - but for the rest of us it gives the ability to experiment a little with some of the more optional areas (which are clearly marked with warnings, so that the inexperienced player has nobody but themselves to blame when a foray inevitably ends in their character's gruesome demise.)  Death still comes often in TOME but at least the player gets the option of being able to learn from their mistakes without restarting the whole thing.

However, the game's greatest strength lies in its character creation and progression.  There are 25 classes and 10 races - but most of these are locked when you start and can be unlocked during play.  Each class and race has access to different skill and talent trees, and gain points to allocate to these as they increase in level.  These can range from making it easier to hit things with your sword or shield, to summoning creatures, to creating a rift in the fabric of reality.  I could pretend to sit here and tell you how many different combinations of class and race and talents and skills and spells there are but it's probably too large a number for my brain to cope with - suffice to say that it's a LOT.  Players really do have a remarkable amount of freedom in how to sculpt their ideal character and, as most races and classes (and some skills) are unlocked by completing objectives in the game even a "failed" playthrough can mean that the player achieves some kind of tangible progress.

There also needs to be a special mention for the sheer amount of work that has gone into the game's world. It is HUGE, with different factions (which the player can join or oppose), loads of dungeons, masses of monsters and thousands of different items. It has a persistent back story, with an over-arching plot, and there are many, many documents and books to be found which give background and detail to it all. This is a world with a history and it is there to be discovered by the player as they gradually progress through the game. For it to be offered up on a "pay what you want" basis really is quite extraordinary and to be applauded.

Now, of course, nothing is perfect and this otherwise excellent game does have a couple of small flaws.  Firstly it can feel a little bit pointless to be killing the standard monsters that litter the dungeons. There are usually a lot of these and it can sometimes seem that you are "ploughing" through them, rather than having to think about tactics or how to survive (the bosses are another matter entirely though).  They don't give much experience to the player, so they don't feel especially important, and it can be a chore to slaughter endless hordes of low-level monsters in order to get to the next exciting boss fight.

And the other problem TOME has is that its areas and bosses are persistent and carry over from game to game - so, for example, Bill the Troll is always to be found in the "secret" area at the end of the Trollmire.  The layout of the dungeons, the loot and the normal monsters are all randomly generated but the actual plot and layout of the game is the same every time - and this can make it a pain to repeat stuff you've already done when you (inevitably) have to restart.

However, these problems are ameliorated by the sheer variety of choices that the player can make with their character and the vast number of different approaches that can be used.  An Archmage, for example, plays completely differently to a Berserker - in fact an Archmage who uses fire plays completely differently to one who uses cold spells.  The game may keep the same objectives in place but it allows you almost total freedom in how to achieve them.  There really is an option for everybody and that can make repeating the same areas and fighting the same bosses much more bearable. 

So, there you go.  A whole new world for free, hundreds of hours of gameplay with nobody telling you to connect to a non-functioning server or treating you like you're a criminal.  Why not give it a go?  And, if you like it, then give the developer some cash.  After all you're an adult, it really is entirely up to you.





TOME is available from its own website, or from Desura (for $10) and it is also on Steam Greenlight, so go and vote for it.

Grimoire - Demo Released

Sit yourself down somewhere quiet.  Turn the TV & radio off, ask the kids to pipe down, and LISTEN.

Can you hear that distant thrumming?  A noise so faint, yet so insistent, that it's really more of a vibration in the earth?  In fact, now you've noticed it, it's not even really a vibration; more a portent, a suggestion of powerful forces massing beyond the horizon.

Because the horsemen of the Apocalypse are gathering my friend, the end of times is approaching and there is going to be a reckoning.  One of the great prophecies has come true. 

The Grimoire demo has finally been released, and history is trembling.

Regular readers of this blog will know which game I am talking about as I've already written about it twice.  I'm not going to go through the history again, (read the previous entries here, and here) but the latest news is that the much-promised demo has finally been released (link at bottom of page).  I'm going to be honest with you, there were times in the past few months when I doubted this would happen, but happen it has and the world is a richer place for it.

Grimoire is something quite unique, in that it is the product of one man's imagination and has taken him, at last count, 17 years to develop.  The game itself is a dungeon crawler, much like Wizardry 6 or 7, and it is, as you might expect, distinctly old-school in its presentation and mechanics.  It is never going to be a million-selling blockbuster, times have changed too much for that during its extended development cycle, but it's something that certainly scratches an itch for many people.  Having it appear here, now, feels like somebody has just been up into their attic and discovered a lost Beatles recording, or an unfinished Dickens novel.  It's a snapshot of another period in game development, it's something from another time, and it comes with all the benefits and drawbacks that entails.

To start with, Grimoire is acting a little bit like an old man who's been asleep for a few years and cannot deal with the world that he finds outside.  The demo crashes.  A lot.  It seems to do this more frequently on more modern systems and this is something that will obviously need to be sorted out before the game can be released.  Cleve assures us that he will do this, and there are ways the player can work around it, but it does still happen, so you should be aware of that.  In Grimoire's defence the game appears to run pretty smoothly within itself, it's just that it's having trouble dealing with the excesses of modern life and wants to go back into its cave every now and again.

The other main drawback I can see with it is that the user interface can be a bit awkward.  Each character has a button next to their portrait which determines the action they will carry out - healing, unlocking, examining an item, searching etc. - and this can be a bit cumbersome at times.  For example, if you want to identify an item then you need to select the spellbook icon to cast a spell, choose "identify" and the spell level, wait for a second, select the item, change the icon to a magnifying glass and then hold the item over the icon to see what it is.  It would have been easier to just cast the spell and then select the item you wanted to examine.  Similarly the inventory system is also a bit cumbersome.  You have a "banner" of boxes under the viewport which contain all the items not equipped by the party.  There isn't any way to sort these into any order (which makes it difficult to keep track of your loot) and I had filled all the available slots by the end of the demo anyway, which doesn't bode well for the full game.  However, these are small niggles and things that could be improved, they're not game breakers in any way or form and sometimes you just need to accept that if you want to play something different then you have to take the rough with the smooth.

Because Grimoire is, if the demo is in any way representative of the final game, something that is quite special and something that really does feel like the next instalment in the Wizardry series (and I do not say things like that lightly).  In fact it actually seems to improve on those games.  It does this in a variety of little ways - players are given three chances when rolling a new character, for example, instead of the famously frustrating "one strike" system in Wizardry 6.  The game will remember the commands used in your previous battle, so you don't have to enter them again, and you can also review those orders before starting any combat.  Similarly there is an "end battle" button which means you can duck out of any encounter which is too tough, at the price of having to load an earlier save, and you can even make the party walk automatically to a chosen point on the map.  These are little things, sure, but they make everything much more fluid and smooth than would otherwise be the case and they show the amount of thought that has gone into crafting the game's systems.

The game uses its own role playing system, which is hard to analyse without a manual, but which appears to be suitably deep and complicated.  Characters are defined by many attributes, ranging from the commonplace, such as Wisdom and Intelligence, to the more unusual like Fellowship and Devotion.  It is unclear yet how these affect the character's performance but the demo gives the impression that there are a lot of calculations going on under the surface.  This system also seems to have been designed entirely from scratch by its creator so, in and of itself, it provides the player with something new to get to grips with and try to understand.

And this attention to detail and creativity also extends to the races and classes that the player can choose from.  There are 14 races in Grimoire and 15 possible classes and although these include the usual suspects (humans, warriors, clerics, thieves and wizards) there are also some more interesting and unusual options available.  An Aeorb, for example, is a weird one-eyed alien thing or the player could choose a Naga (a kind of Hindu snake man) or a giant or a vampire or a camp-looking lion.  Similarly the classes include Necromancers (yay), Pirates, Templars and Jesters.  The whole selection re-inforces the feeling that this is something different that is being offered here, that this is something that hasn't been focus grouped or sanitised - that this is a game which has been developed outside of the normal boundaries and which, as a result, is not content with just offering up the same old choices.

However, where Grimoire really comes into its own is in the world that is presented to the player.  Graphically charming, it is full of little details and asides which clearly show the amount of effort and love that have gone into it.  The writing is of an extremely high standard and the world's lore is present throughout the environment.  In fact, in one dungeon one of the discoverable secrets is a room full of inscripted poetry about (presumably) future adversaries - which is lovely to see at a time when any other game developer would have just filled it with loot.  There are also plenty of these secret areas to find, and the game manages to make this difficult enough to be satisfying without making it impossible.  In other games in this genre they would show that there was a secret area behind a wall by drawing the wall slightly differently.  This was hard to find at first but once you knew what you were looking for you could spot them from a distance.  Here the walls (from what I can see) look exactly the same and have to be manually searched with the cursor.  The "trigger" points also differ from place to place - at the top of the wall in one location, in the middle in another - so the player has to be thorough, and some walls don't even have a trigger, they're just an illusion the party can walk through.  However, the player can use spells to help them detect such things and the game will also keep an account of how much of an area has been explored, so those of us with low level OCD can sleep at night.

Grimoire is a labour of love and, if you're interested in this kind of thing, then I would recommend that you give the demo a go.  The Indiegogo campaign has also restarted, so you can pre-order the game from there if you like what you see, and Cleve is still insistent that the full game will be released in May (even though the demo came out three months after his original deadline).  I think that will be tight, to say the least, and if previous history has shown us anything it is that this date will almost definitely be revised(!)  However, he has got the demo out and it does appear that he is working hard towards getting the full game released at some point in the (relatively) near future.  Personally I am really excited to see what happens next.

NB:
Update 04/04/13 - Cleve has just released a much more stable version of the demo (1.31), which seems to have resolved all of the previous issues. Get it here. (Remember to still run as admin.)

If you want to keep abreast of current developments then check this thread out

If you just read this article and were very confused then read...

Grimoire : Heralds of the Winged Exemplar

The Grimoire Thing Just Gets Weirder

And Wizardry 6 : Bane of the Cosmic Forge

If you have downloaded the demo and cannot get it to work then..
1. Install it directly into your C Drive (i.e. C:\Grimoire) not into the "programs" directory
2. Ensure you are running it as admin (the 1.2 installer should do this automatically.)
3. Run in compatibility mode with Windows XP.
4. Check the thread linked to above to see if anybody else has had any bright ideas.
5. Pray to whichever god you hold dear.

A Beginner's Guide to Gaming

Games are quickly becoming the most popular form of entertainment on the planet and more people are playing them than ever before.  However, like most things they have evolved over time and now there are numerous conventions and shortcuts which are familiar to gamers, but which could mystify newcomers.  We love a righteous crusade against obfuscation and misdirection as much as the next gaming-based blog and we want to to help those of you who are stumbling about in the darkness.  So listen up!  Here are The Bane of Queequeg's top tips for games beginners.

Rule Number 1 - Never Go The Obvious Way
If you are playing a game and you have a choice of 2 paths always, ALWAYS, go down the one which doesn't look like the way forward.  If, by some hideous mistake, you pick the one which actually develops the plot, or which goes towards your stated objective, then make every effort you can to backtrack the other way.  It is extremely rare for game designers to put genuine dead ends into a game.  Every option usually has something at its end and you will be missing cool secret stuff by actually trying to achieve your stated goal.  In order to succeed you need to get every advantage you can, and this is only possible by exploring every nook and cranny.  If you actually try to do what the game is asking you to with the minimum of fuss, and in a timely and efficient manner, then you are likely to miss out on a huge amount of the content and finish some games in a ridiculously short time (Hi Dishonored!)  Games are designed for their players to be obsessive treasure and secret hunters not a normal well-adjusted person like you.  Remember this.

Trousers in Diablo III.

Rule Number 2 - Improve Everything
Let's talk about crafting.  There was a time, in the really early days of gaming, when you were given a spaceship, or a small round yellow pill-eating thing and left to get on with it.  Gradually, however, players began to be able to improve their on-screen representatives; usually by levelling them, buying new equipment or picking up stuff that was being stored in a crate somewhere.  This greater flexibility came about organically over a period of many years but it suffered a major innovation relatively recently.  For in a game development meeting somewhere, somebody must have suddenly sat bolt upright in their chair and shouted "Eureka!  Why not let the players make their own trousers?" and that is where we are at today.  These days any game worth its salt will let the player combine materials in order to make their own equipment, clothing, weapons etc.  Of course the downside to this is that now everybody is wandering about loaded down with bits of twig and scraps of cloth - like one of those hoarders who think that their flat-filling collection of plastic bags will come in useful one day.  Games  - treating you like you have a mental illness since 1975.

Rule Number 3 - Nick Everything, You Might Need It
This rule counts double if you are playing a Japanese game (you can tell, all the characters will look about 13, with huge spiky hair and they'll be dressed like an Australian's nightmare) but in most games you can walk into somebody's house, go up to their bedroom, rifle through their underwear drawer, take out their favourite pants, put them on your head whilst shouting "I'VE GOT YOUR PANTS ON MY HEAD!" and they will not even bat an eyelid.  In fact they'll probably be asking you to go and get them 5 lots of wheat from the next village along as you do it.  There are notable exceptions to this, such as the Elder Scrolls games, but in most cases you can take whatever you want, from whoever you want and nothing will happen.  Go on!  March on in!  Help yourself!

Probably a Rocket Launcher.  Or a Sword of Crafting. Or a Master Key

Rule Number 4 - Crates Are The Most Important Things Ever.
Nobody knows when crates officially became the most important thing ever.  One day there were no crates and then the next... there they were!  Everywhere!  Thousands of the buggers, infesting every game ever made and just demanding to be smashed!  I know that, in the real world, 4 foot high wooden boxes are usually limited to warehouses and military storage depots - probably not places you come into contact with every day - but in games they are unavoidable.  And, not only this, but they have a wide range of purposes.  You can pull them and push them, you can break them, you can jump on top of them to reach high ledges and baddies will often store critical security passes or fantastically valuable items in them.  If you see a crate then ignore everything else and go and try to see what it does straight away.  You won't be sorry.

Rule Number 5 - You're a Mapmaking Superstar Hero
Don't worry about getting lost.  Once again game designers are here to help you.  They are your friends.  In almost every game made since about 1990 the player has had access to an automatically completed map, and often this will take the form of a "minimap" displayed in a corner of your screen.  What's more, if you are playing pretty much anything released after Grand Theft Auto III then that map will also show you where all of the locally accessible minigames and sidequests are as well.  It doesn't matter if you're Batman, the Dragonborn, a kid stuck on a tropical island or an Eastern European low-level hoodlum, it will be there.  You need never pay any attention to your surroundings again, but do remember to check it occasionally in order to make sure you haven't missed any dead ends (see Rule No. 1).

Big bloody Jessie.

Rule Number 6 - Nothing Bloody Matters
I first noticed that nothing bloody matters in games when Bioshock came out.  In Bioshock there are these huge guys in diving suits called Big Daddies and they are TOUGH.  They have a drill for a hand and they're about 8 foot tall - they take a lot of beating.  Wow.  Proper challenge huh?  Well yeah, they killed me loads of times but nothing bloody mattered because, when I died, I was reborn in a chamber about 20 metres away.  And, as if that wasn't bad enough, the Big Daddy was still as damaged as when I left him.  All I needed to do was continually run at him and wear him down until he stopped getting up.  Nothing could hurt me and what could have been an epic encounter became something totally devoid of challenge or accomplishment.  For me that ruined a game which had loads of other really good bits in it, but it's something that is present, to a greater or lesser extent, in most games.  Whether it's restarting missions or autosaving your progress every time you go through a door, you will have ample opportunities to correct your mistakes and do that perfect run - so don't fret.  Relax!  Enjoy yourself!

Rule Number 7 - Baddies are Stupid
Right, picture this.  You're an evil genius with control over a small army of hand picked mercenary henchmen.  You know that, somewhere, a pesky hero is plotting to get into your secret volcano base to rescue some hostages or whatever else it is that bunch do for kicks.  The only way into said base is through a massive security door - 5 layers of military grade strengthened titanium - impervious to anything less than a tactical nuclear weapon.  And, obviously, you need a way to open this door so that you can go to the shops and get your milk, so you have a key.  What do you do with this key to keep it safe?  If you are a normal evil genius you make sure it is either on your person or in a big vault INSIDE the security door.  However, if you are a game's evil genius then you will place that key in (almost definitely) a crate or (less likely) a desk drawer OUTSIDE the door - so that the hero can easily gain access.  If, for some unexplainable reason, you don't do this then you will ensure that you leave the base's extensive network of ventilation shafts unlocked and unguarded.  If you're playing a game and you can't see the way forward then just look about for a bit, there will be some unspeakably stupid security lapse just around the corner - guaranteed.

A panacea for the world's ills

Rule Number 8 - Mutant Healing Powers
You will find yourself getting shot at a lot in games (or stabbed or run over, or whatever.)  Try not to worry too much though because, once again, the system is there to help you.  Most game characters make Wolverine look like a little old lady with a dodgy hip and they can usually recover from life threatening wounds by merely applying bandages or eating some kind of herb.  If you're playing one of those games with the swords and the dragons and that then it'll be a potion which miraculously restores you.  If you're playing Halo then all you need to do is crouch behind a crate for a few seconds and you'll heal yourself.  Sometimes you're even allowed to stop time while you do it.  Basically if you ever die in a game then you're probably a terrible loser.

Rule Number 9 (and 9a) - Pick Your Battles
This rule has a sub-rule.  The sub-rule is that anything that is released on a yearly basis is a rip off - whether that's FIFA, Madden, NHL, Tiger Woods, Call of Duty or whatever.  There is little substantive difference between, for example, FIFA 12 and FIFA 13 and certainly not enough to justify another 50 quid.  If you feel the need to buy these games every time they come out then fine, you go ahead, I'm not your Dad and it's your money; but accept that one day you will come home drunk from the pub, stick 12 in the Xbox instead of 13 and you won't even notice the difference.  Now games like FIFA are probably the most obvious example of this but, in fact, lots of games are extremely similar - this is, after all, why I am able to draw up lists like this.  There's nothing wrong with that but there is also a bit of a revolution going on in gaming at the moment.  Kickstarter has made it much easier for developers to raise funds and this, combined with the ability for them to sell directly over the internet from their own sites to the consumer, has meant that they are much freer to make the games they want to, rather than the ones that they are told to by the big publishers.  There are thousands of games being made and some of them are actually trying to do some really interesting things - or at least not just serving up another "open world" first person shooter with a minimap and weapon upgrades.  So get out there and see what's on offer.

You go, Tiger!