Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest - turn-based isometric RPG from Grimrock devs

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[pm_675]

Not edgy but genuinely curious, has there been a good deterministic rpg, tactical or strategy game?

hard west was awesome, phantom doctrine had issues

Thanks, in any case too little deterministic games and not a lot of great gameplay

lukaszek

thank you for drawing my attention to this. I can see that more and more developers are going away from die which warms my heart. I can never stress enough how cards >> dice

But cards are RNG. Whatever it's cards or dice is not important.

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

lukaszek

thank you for drawing my attention to this. I can see that more and more developers are going away from die which warms my heart. I can never stress enough how cards >> dice

But cards are RNG. Whatever it's cards or dice is not important.

Cards are definitely RNG, but do have some nuances that dice don't. I far prefer dice for most forms of resolution.

The problem with RNG in computer games, is that the core mechanics are almost always linear. These systems make for poor mechanics at their extremes. Quadratic mechanics are a bit more difficult to create--especially if you're doing it with literal dice rather than a programmable spreadsheet and graph. The results, however elegant, can be difficult to understand or communicate precisely and concisely to the player. The player has to be willing to act based on concepts and conditions rather than crunch a specific outcome. In an industry widely conquered by "balance", it's unlikely any will make moves in that direction.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[pm_675]

But cards are RNG. Whatever it's cards or dice is not important.

whether its poker, roulette or craps is not important

Truthfully I like poker a lot

 

[BEvers]

No

Has there ever been a bad deterministic game? The rejection of the failed RNG mechanics of the past has emerged as one of the most reliable indicators of overall design quality. I'm going to follow this one a lot more closely now.

Not edgy but genuinely curious, has there been a good deterministic rpg, tactical or strategy game?

Telepath Tactics had very few flaws.

 

[Bara]

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Bara]

Some more stuff posted by Petri in the comments section of the last blog.

1) will your game have elevations? For example, some enemies on higher plateau could be unavaiable for melee but only could get hit with spells and bow


1. There are some elevations but they are mostly cosmetic (graphics look better if everything is not laid out on a flat plane). The gameplay happens on a 2D grid. We love grids and they make it much easier to estimate line of sight, see the reach of enemies and count movement, for example.

2) will you have secret/hidden walls and areas

2. Not really. The missions are designed so that all essential information is open. In the early days we tried to mix combat with secrets, but it just wouldn’t work. The reason is that when playing you are so focused on the battle mechanics, so looking for secrets at the same time felt distracting. That said, there are a few non-combat puzzle missions for variety.

We have thought about various initiative systems a lot. In the end the alternating turns system won us over, because it supports the kind of gameplay we prefer — ability combos and team tactics (interleaving actions of the heroes).

I think the key to avoiding the “brutal combat” issue you mentioned lies with level design and asymmetric goals. For example, the heroes should have other goals than just wiping out the enemies. Also there is nothing wrong with wiping out a large group of enemies in one turn occasionally, as long as you can’t keep doing it all the time. The “brutal combat” aspect has a limiting factor to the number of heroes though. In Druidstone it seems that a team of 3 – 4 heroes is most fun and keeps the balance in check.

Combat has definitely a big role in Druidstone, bigger than in Grimrock games, which were 33% puzzles and 33% exploration and 33% combat.

You are right about initiative systems that they open up design space for related abilities. For example, abilities that move units up/down on the initiative track.

Then again alternating turns system also has its own merits: the major one being able to interleave actions of your characters in a natural way. Tactics that rely on careful positioning of heroes works better with this system, and since Druidstone is a grid based game we want to emphasize tactical positioning and movement on the battlefield.

There’s definitely more than one way of playing through a mission (when designing a level we don’t plan ahead how each mission should be played). Also heroes abilities and equipment affects the optimal strategy, if there really is one.

There are no saving throws in Druidstone, but certain enemies are immune or weak to certain effects. If there’s no saving throws can’t I just spam my abilities on enemies? No, the key here is that you have to carefully consider when and on which enemies to use your special abilities — the most powerful abilities have a limited number of uses. You also have to consider how to handle enemies that cause status effects.

Due to boardgame like mechanics we don’t have items that have +5% something. In fact, each item is handcrafted. I don’t think you will be disappointed. B-)

I'm not sure if this game will be one of my absolute favorites like Grimrock with the direction there taking but I think Druidstone will be a fun enough rpg. I'm just happy that once again no round-robin turn order system is confirmed and while I'm slightly remiss about the lack of saving throws at least the spells or abilities that cause those effects are a limited resource.

If the itemization blog comes out interesting I'll probably feel a lot better about the overall thing. I think I also rember something about stones of power (druidstoneS?) being used to upgrade the individual characters.

 

[Reinhardt]

Codex has twitter account?

 

[Infinitron]

Druidstone gets a Remedy writer: https://druidstone-game.com/mikko-rautalahti-joins-team

This could get weird.

Mikko Rautalahti joins the team!

This is big! Mikko “Mikki” Rautalahti, a dear friend and a talented writer who has worked on hit games like Alan Wake and Quantum Break, has joined the Druidstone team! With Mikki on board the rest of us can concentrate on game mechanics, levels and balancing, while Mikki is stabbing away at the story, writing missing dialogue lines, filling gaps, and do what is necessary to make the characters and the world really come to life. Mikki and I have a long history and the idea of working together has always been on the back of my mind. Previously other projects and timing has prevented this, but luckily the planets finally aligned… So, without further ado I’ll pass the mike to Mikki and let him introduce himself!



Let me start off by talking a little bit about how we got here. In a lot of ways, this feels like the culmination of a long process: I’ve known Petri for a good long while now — we both worked on Alan Wake together at Remedy, back in the previous decade — but we haven’t actually had a chance to work together directly after those days. When he and the Almost Human gang started working on Grimrock, I was very much into it; it was a lovely union of the classic and the modern, and it was executed with what I thought was exceptional skill and clarity of vision.

We briefly discussed some potential collaboration at that point, but Grimrock really didn’t end up being the kind of game where my services were needed. Over the years since, there have been a bunch of different ideas and concepts. I was still working at Remedy at the time, and their office was right next to Ctrl Alt Ninja’s, so we’d see each other regularly. (Not sure what the difference between Almost Human and Ctrl Alt Ninja is? In practice, the answer is “not much.” It’s mostly just a business thing.)

So every so often, Petri would go, “hey, we have something new we’re working on, wanna come over and see what you think?” And then he’d show me something clever and exciting they’d worked up, and we’d talk about it. The idea of working together on something often came up, but they were in an inconvenient phase with their work, or I was way too busy with something else, and it just didn’t come to pass.

Until now. Now the stars are right, the words of power have been spoken, and a pact has been made, and here I am, just working on Druidstone like it ain’t no thing.

But it is a thing. I’ve been in this racket for a long while, and I’ve been involved in a lot of projects. Some of them I genuinely loved and believed in, others I didn’t; some I worked hard on, but you will never see anything about them, because they didn’t get made for one reason or another. It’s a tough business. For me, Druidstone stands out from that crowd. It’s not a big AAA production, and that means there’s very low latency in decision-making — there’s a small roomful of people, and if they think something is good, that’s it, done, decided. There’s no external validation required, no notes from the IP owner’s marketing department, no brand new executive producer on the publisher side suddenly upending everything because they just got appointed and God forbid they fail to make a splash. There’s just the people in that room, working hard to ship a game they really give a crap about, that they have a personal stake in.

I don’t mean to romanticize indie game making too much. I know making games is never easy; indie, AAA, whatever, creative labor is just super hard, period. But for me, right now, Druidstone’s exactly the sort of thing I want to do. I’m enjoying the immediacy of it. I like the elegance of its design, how the combat works, and I like that it’s also a brightly colored fantasy game. It kind of wears its heart on its sleeve; it’s very sincere about what it is. I like that we can make it funny and cool and weird. I like that it’s not just something people make because you have to do something, and it might as well be this. It’s being made with passion.

That’s something I can get behind.

I am, of course, coming into the project at the tail end of its development. A lot of effort has already gone into building the story; Petri and Janne Sundqvist in particular have been working on it. Still, with all the critical development work being done, it’s fair to say the story track needs some extra love. Somebody really needs to bring it home, make sure all the pieces fit together, take a look at things with a fresh eye, polish it all up. So there’ll be some heavy lifting involved, but I think we’ll end up with something that’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot going on in Menhir Forest, and I look forward to showing you a secret or two.

 

[OldNorseSaga]

This is definitely interesting news Infi.

Well, I hope druidstone got great story, then...

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[V_K]

So no more hearts for HP? Phew.

 

[Theldaran]

Seems like the game is taking forever.

 

[Bara]

Beta soon-ish. Maybe

 

[Bara]

As for full release date latest comet is late spring in Finland. Also the bit about wanting the game on as many storefronts as possible when asked about exclusiveness was nice to hear.

 

[Infinitron]

Late spring in Finland. What is that, May?

 

[Bara]

I have no idea but I guess so. At least thats what https://www.visitfinland.com/spring/ says.

 

[V_K]

Late spring in Finland. What is that, May?

Naturally, like everywhere in Northern hemisphere.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Late spring in Finland. What is that, May?

July of course; just after late winter of June.

 

[Reinhardt]

And before early winter in August.

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[agris]

They should have tweeted that @inxile

 

[Abu Antar]

Here’s a sneak peek: