Grimrock

First off, I loved this game. LOVED it. Then again, I beat all of it's forefathers back in the day - Dungeon Master, EoB, Stonekeep, etc.

I just beat it for the first time. I was playing hard/oldschool with a minotaur mace fighter, a human sword fighter, a liz archer, and a insectoid fire mage.

Thank you so much for giving me a reason to get out the graph paper again. I will throw money at any expansion, sequel, or similar project.

Now that the praise is out of the way... my gripes. Please note my gripes are with the caveat that I loved the game.

1) The secrets were great! The puzzles were great! But please, make some harder ones. Barely any spinner traps, and the few teleport trap areas were far too easy, especially since anything with a medium difficultly or higher usually had an accompanying 'scroll hint' that made it simple.
One of the coolest things about 'oldschool' mapping is that back in the day, we had to solve some really, really hard puzzles that automapping simply antiquated . I was expecting a bit more in that regard.

2) mages stink. many threads on this, and they're all true. the only purpose my fire mage served was as a light source. casting was a pain in the butt, and even enchanting arrows was a pain since it ruined auto-pickup. my archer should autopickup anything he shot, imo, even if it changes state (fire to normal). or, just let the darn magical arrows stay enchanted unless i override with a new enchantment (say, convert ice arrows i find to fire), and save me the wrist pain of moving around inventory and enchanting every minute.

3) more spells. many threads on this, and they're all true. healing and other support spells would make mages far more useful, since they're not particularly good combat mages with their current dps. give us plenty more support spells (greater light, healing, etc). some more combat spells would be nice too. zzgo.

4) experience is broken. many threads on this, and they're all true. ultimately, this doesn't matter too much, since even with my characters completely out of whack level wise, i had no problem beating the game... but anyone that cares about this sort of thing will hate it, and anyone who doesn't will be happy with whatever you decide upon. my support characters shouldn't become useless just because i don't use them. heck, it took me like 7 dungeon levels of not using my mage (due to pain in the butt spells) before i realized he was perma-gimped. no fun.

5) skills. I absolutely love the specialization factor you have going, though i also felt a bit hemmed in by it. the high level perks (especially level 50) seemed so good that i never wanted to waste any points in 'odd' paths like, say, staff defense. i'm not sure how to fix this, but i do wish there was a bit more ability to explore multiple paths somehow, without breaking the game.

6) my favorite levels were all in the middle.

the most ultimate gift to your fans ever would be a level designer. let us build levels, and this game will find a long term, loving user base as we explore each other's stories for years to come... all waiting for a sequel.

awesome job guys. i know this email lists issues, but really, i absolutely loved it!

affa wrote:the most ultimate gift to your fans ever would be a level designer. let us build levels, and this game will find a long term, loving user base as we explore each other's stories for years to come... all waiting for a sequel.

awesome job guys. i know this email lists issues, but really, i absolutely loved it!

Check the blog. They will be giving us mod tools and we all wait with baited breath for them.

Glad to hear you enjoyed the game so much!

Daniel.

Saice wrote:

affa wrote:the most ultimate gift to your fans ever would be a level designer. let us build levels, and this game will find a long term, loving user base as we explore each other's stories for years to come... all waiting for a sequel.

awesome job guys. i know this email lists issues, but really, i absolutely loved it!

Check the blog. They will be giving us mod tools and we all wait with baited breath for them.

Now that's just awesome. Very glad to hear it.

I know it will likely never happen, but imagine a mod that added a 'old school' combat feature, like Bard's Tale or Wizardry where combat was turn based? The dungeon modeller (visuals, movement, traps, plates, etc) is so robust that we'd be able to design both incredible games in the line of DM or EoB, but also make Bard's tale style ones. A guy can dream, right?

If I had to add a flaw (at least for me) then it's the fact 99% of the pits drop you in a "isolated" sublevel of the level below and you 99% of the time have a convenient teleporter/stair back to the level where you came from (and in most cases really close to where you dropped in)

In games like Eye of the Beholder pits just happened to be pits... it landed you straight on that spot to the level below, in most cases there were no quick means to get back... heck I can only think of 2 pits in the whole Eye game that had a easy way back and that were the pits on the south section of level 5, they dropped you into a subsection of level 6 that prevented you from further exploring level6, you had to take the stairs back to 5. Second occurance was the "room of pits" in level 3 that dropped you to a sublevel (wasn't really level 4 as the walls wern't dwarvish) and you had a teleporter back...

Pretty much ALL other pits just dropped you something in the middle of the level below and you had the choice of finding a way back which could be very dramatic experience (remember falling straiht in the spider subsection of level 4 from a pit on level 3...) or you just continued and skipped the part of the level above you didn't explore...

Now Im guessing they wanted to make it a little more "casual" that way as to not have you trying to backtrack to much BUT in doing so, pits turned from something dangerous to something "let's see if there are any goodies in this pit" and im sure a lot of people out there made a habbit of saving and jumping down to "check it out"... that devalues the pits as a means of adding difficulty or inserting randomness in the game.

I think the only pits in whole LoG that didn't follow that path were the ones in level 12 that you need to jump into to get to 13... ofcourse as there it was "needed" to progress, it doesn't make my defination of the above either...

DJK wrote:In games like Eye of the Beholder pits just happened to be pits... it landed you straight on that spot to the level below, in most cases there were no quick means to get back...

In Dungeon Master pits were just like they are in Grimrock. Mostly isolated sub floors. Grimrock honestly at lest to me seems like it draw most of its style and mechanics from DM for inspiration.