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Aeon of Sands: The Trail - Dungeon Crawling RPG love letter to the 90s!

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
i read a lot of complaints about the writing like wizardry 1-5 had any writing at all and 6 like an introduction and a closing speech. yes the writing is bad but not jRPG bottom of the barrel bad. and jRPGs is pretty much the only king of blobbers these days.
you can always just go play bard's tale 4 like thats a good blobber.
it's one thing to feel entitled to getting the game you want from people that promised you a spiritual sequel to some game you miss like poe and deadfire and a whole other thing to shitpost in the thread of a game that is not your cup of tea and never promised to be.
muh real time, muh writing, muh screen size...
do you morons even know what times you live in?
rampant level scaling, josh sawyering, hp bloating, itemization randomization, sjw propaganda, hair physics, 4k and VR bullshit, open world - open end - sandbox - create your own content, etc
then a game comes along basically out of nowhere and gives you events with c&c, hand made maps with puzzles, secrets, consumables, and hand made itemization with boni and mali and you shit on it like some entitled pricks.
motherfuckers!
 

Sinatar

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
569
So because a bunch of shitty games come out I'm supposed to accept this shitty game? That's your reasoning?

It's a bad game. If it came out in the 90's it would have been shit on too. The dungeon design is awful, the "puzzles" you mention are infantile, the combat is beyond brain dead easy. It has some really nice artwork and that's it. It falls flat on it's face in every other way.
 

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
So because a bunch of shitty games come out I'm supposed to accept this shitty game? That's your reasoning?

It's a bad game. If it came out in the 90's it would have been shit on too. The dungeon design is awful, the "puzzles" you mention are infantile, the combat is beyond brain dead easy. It has some really nice artwork and that's it. It falls flat on it's face in every other way.
try again with some detail. where exactly did the game touch you and are you sure it was a bad touch? did you fake all that moaning and panting? are you sure you butt is sore from being stretched or are you just mad you were unable to come?
 

Sinatar

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 25, 2014
Messages
569
So because a bunch of shitty games come out I'm supposed to accept this shitty game? That's your reasoning?

It's a bad game. If it came out in the 90's it would have been shit on too. The dungeon design is awful, the "puzzles" you mention are infantile, the combat is beyond brain dead easy. It has some really nice artwork and that's it. It falls flat on it's face in every other way.
try again with some detail. where exactly did the game touch you and are you sure it was a bad touch? did you fake all that moaning and panting? are you sure you butt is sore from being stretched or are you just mad you were unable to come?

Sorry I didn't realize I was talking to a child. My mistake.
 

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
So because a bunch of shitty games come out I'm supposed to accept this shitty game? That's your reasoning?

It's a bad game. If it came out in the 90's it would have been shit on too. The dungeon design is awful, the "puzzles" you mention are infantile, the combat is beyond brain dead easy. It has some really nice artwork and that's it. It falls flat on it's face in every other way.
try again with some detail. where exactly did the game touch you and are you sure it was a bad touch? did you fake all that moaning and panting? are you sure you butt is sore from being stretched or are you just mad you were unable to come?

Sorry I didn't realize I was talking to a child. My mistake.
still waiting for concrete arguments.
 

Reapa

Doom Preacher
Joined
Jul 10, 2009
Messages
2,340
Location
Germany
guys, can anyone tell me how to open any of these doors?
9ZX8Pmn.png
 

Martyr

Arcane
Joined
Jan 28, 2018
Messages
1,095
Location
Bavaria
just bought Aeon of Sands, the text in the intro says that every dialogue can be skipped while still fully enjoying the game and without missing anything important.
and my god, do I hope that this is true. this way I might be able to LARP that I'm playing a Dark Sun dungeon crawler. because the atmosphere seems to be great and I like the setting of course, but that exact atmosphere is so easily destroyed and trampled upon by the "funny" fourth wall breaking writing...
and I can't understand why they don't allow character creation. bad enough that you can't create a full party, but not even a single character?? phew. but oh well, it is what it is and I'll see if I can enjoy this game nonetheless.

edit: Aeon of Sands is actually one of the finest real-time Dungeon Crawlers I've ever played despite the issues I've mentioned.
 
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marcuz

Two Bits Kid
Developer
Joined
Mar 11, 2015
Messages
47
Location
Italy
This week we released a huge patch making combat more challenging and fun (bosses behaviour / AI, range combat, improved hard mode difficulty, and tons of other stuff)

We've also released a 35 minutes soundtrack and a 100 pages art book!

Check everything here is you're curious: https://steamcommunity.com/games/907820/announcements/detail/1726470729228231641

And the game is at 25% discount as part of Steam Lunar Sale for the rest of the weekend! :)

edit: Aeon of Sands is actually one of the finest real-time Dungeon Crawlers I've ever played despite the issues I've mentioned.

Thank you for having given the game a chance! :)
 
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Contagium

Savant
Patron
Joined
Aug 2, 2018
Messages
477
Location
New Hampshire, USA
Played through it to completion. The art style was great, and a couple of the dungeons were amongst the best I've seen in the genre .The writing, however, was not my for my taste. Otherwise a fun game
 

Contagium

Savant
Patron
Joined
Aug 2, 2018
Messages
477
Location
New Hampshire, USA

marcuz

Two Bits Kid
Developer
Joined
Mar 11, 2015
Messages
47
Location
Italy
Any news on the sequels?
Not in the near future. We are keeping options open, but, in the meantime, both of us have been swallowed by real life. The more likely thing is that we will add alternative gameplay modes to the game, towards end of the year; past that, I cannot say.
 
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marcuz

Two Bits Kid
Developer
Joined
Mar 11, 2015
Messages
47
Location
Italy
To you (few but dear) guys marking with despair the news that the game will not have sequels in the future:
I feel you. It's just... a game like AoS, or a sequel, is unsustainable, at the moment.
We have to sell 10000 more copies to make this possible!
...given or taken a zero...
 
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newtmonkey

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
1,725
Location
Goblin Lair
I enjoyed what I played of this game, and was hoping an Aeon of Sands 2 would be even better. Cheers to marcuz for following the dream and releasing an RPG!

For anyone playing this or wanting to play this, I suggest playing the game at a lower resolution. I was initially playing it at 1920x1080, but found that setting it to (I think) 1024x768 resulted in larger dungeon window (or at least, smaller borders). Give it a try!
 

marcuz

Two Bits Kid
Developer
Joined
Mar 11, 2015
Messages
47
Location
Italy
marcuz have you contacted Matt Chat about a review and/or interview?

mattbarton.exe @ gmail.com

https://www.youtube.com/user/blacklily8/about
Yeah, we did an interview with him (I was terrible, sleep deprivation and bad audio), he's a great guy and and was a really nice chat, regardless my condition at the time.

I enjoyed what I played of this game, and was hoping an Aeon of Sands 2 would be even better. Cheers to marcuz for following the dream and releasing an RPG!

For anyone playing this or wanting to play this, I suggest playing the game at a lower resolution. I was initially playing it at 1920x1080, but found that setting it to (I think) 1024x768 resulted in larger dungeon window (or at least, smaller borders). Give it a try!


That's very nice, thank you! :D And that's a good advice.

AoS, due to all graphic being bitmap and we trying to have the graphic at 1:1 or with integer scaling on monitors of different native resolution, has a fairly robust resolution changing system; when that fails to give you the max interactive area possible, because of the combination of monitor and resolutions allowed by the graphic card, you can still always force it to stretch to your monitor (stretch, in the video options), and / or change your monitor resolution too.

It's easier to do it than to explain it XD
 

luj1

You're all shills
Vatnik
Joined
Jan 2, 2016
Messages
12,869
Location
Eastern block
So I put a little over 6 hours into Aeon of Sands today...

Pros:
+ Great aesthetic, really nice art and background music helps set a cool tone
+ Neat setting, it's a post apocalypse where people have lost all technology and have forgotten there even was a time when the world wasn't like this. Feels very Dark Sun-ish.

Cons:
- Combat is completely brain dead easy. You can square dance around everything really easily, the only times I took damage in combat was when I was dumb and cornered myself.
- Dungeons are very very bland. One of my twitch viewers asked if the maps were randomly generated cause they seemed like it, they aren't randomly generated but they certainly feel like Dungeon Hack maps. Just big empty mazes with nothing interesting going on at all.
- Itemization is poor. I found so many duplicates of items I already had, getting any kind of upgrade was rare.
- Character progression is non existent. You don't level up, you increase a skill that seems to have no effect on anything. For example my fighter went from 0% fighting to almost 70%, nothing changed. He hits *every* time regardless of skill and damage was determined purely by his weapon. So your only real feeling of progression is gear and as I said above, the itemization ain't great.
- The floor is lava. Seriously they *love* covering their dungeons in floor tiles that hurt you and force you to walk through them. I guess this is to compensate for the fact that you'll never take combat damage.
- Inventory management is a nightmare. You start with 1 character with 25 slots, I recruited a second character who *HAD NO INVENTORY*. Yes, the second character cannot carry or equip any items at all. You'll be juggling weapons, healing items, all these weird mana items (the game has a *really* odd magic system), totems to cast spells, and occasionally items needed to solve the dungeon. I left so much stuff lying on the floor cause I had no room for it.
- The writing is bizarre. So the game sets this really sombre cool mood with the art and music, yet the writing almost feels like deadpool with your character constantly breaking the fourth wall and cracking bad jokes. So tonally it's all over the map. It's also very clearly been translated into english from another language, poorly.

So yea really disappointed in this. It looked super cool and it's in a genre I love to death but they whiffed on just about everything here.

Thanks for the insight. I had great hopes for this. Oh well.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,784
So I put a little over 6 hours into Aeon of Sands today...

Pros:
+ Great aesthetic, really nice art and background music helps set a cool tone
+ Neat setting, it's a post apocalypse where people have lost all technology and have forgotten there even was a time when the world wasn't like this. Feels very Dark Sun-ish.

Cons:
- Combat is completely brain dead easy. You can square dance around everything really easily, the only times I took damage in combat was when I was dumb and cornered myself.
- Dungeons are very very bland. One of my twitch viewers asked if the maps were randomly generated cause they seemed like it, they aren't randomly generated but they certainly feel like Dungeon Hack maps. Just big empty mazes with nothing interesting going on at all.
- Itemization is poor. I found so many duplicates of items I already had, getting any kind of upgrade was rare.
- Character progression is non existent. You don't level up, you increase a skill that seems to have no effect on anything. For example my fighter went from 0% fighting to almost 70%, nothing changed. He hits *every* time regardless of skill and damage was determined purely by his weapon. So your only real feeling of progression is gear and as I said above, the itemization ain't great.
- The floor is lava. Seriously they *love* covering their dungeons in floor tiles that hurt you and force you to walk through them. I guess this is to compensate for the fact that you'll never take combat damage.
- Inventory management is a nightmare. You start with 1 character with 25 slots, I recruited a second character who *HAD NO INVENTORY*. Yes, the second character cannot carry or equip any items at all. You'll be juggling weapons, healing items, all these weird mana items (the game has a *really* odd magic system), totems to cast spells, and occasionally items needed to solve the dungeon. I left so much stuff lying on the floor cause I had no room for it.
- The writing is bizarre. So the game sets this really sombre cool mood with the art and music, yet the writing almost feels like deadpool with your character constantly breaking the fourth wall and cracking bad jokes. So tonally it's all over the map. It's also very clearly been translated into english from another language, poorly.

So yea really disappointed in this. It looked super cool and it's in a genre I love to death but they whiffed on just about everything here.

Thanks for the insight. I had great hopes for this. Oh well.

He's pretty much correct, I loved the art-style, but nothing else
 

marcuz

Two Bits Kid
Developer
Joined
Mar 11, 2015
Messages
47
Location
Italy
Hey mate, I respect anybody's opinion on the game, even these; but for the sake of fairness, I would like to address a few inaccuracies that go around since that video and other released at the same time.

The version played by Sinatar was 1.0 or thereabout, and the game has been updated many times, and heavily.

Based on users input, among other things, the harm from terrain obstacles has been reduced, and protection provided in form of better shoes; and still, **why should you walk over "lava" in real life?** It's a good option to first ignore the dangerous floors until you have protected yourself. How can you complain about the lack of depth, if you don't even treat where you tread on as a puzzle, in this kind of game???

Combat balance has been made more extreme: much easier at the easy level (because of Sinatar among others, who was killed many times throughout is "too easy" playthrough), and dramatically harder on hard mode: yes, it relies still a lot **but not exclusively** on combat dance, just like Eye of the Beholder, yet the AI is way more complex than in the old games, because enemies can surround you, flee and react...

I haven't once finished the game in hard mode, and I designed those mazes and monsters!


And I understand that in 2018 maybe you are used to The Witchers and Skyrims, or to complex tactical, turn based games, but this is a fork, if you will, on older games, with the addition of a different story and story approach.

Also important is the fact that this is a game so branched that everything depends on your decisions during the narrative.
If you don't like your current game setup, you can still always try a very different path.

This is true for both the narrative (how the game story "paints" the main character) and for the content: companions, itemization, and obviously explorable areas.
We have 68 dungeons, 68! and how can Sinatar say they are all bland: he has seen but a small fraction of them all, less than 10 out of 68!
Sinitar saw the initial dungeon plus a few of open areas; a small selection of basic items and one companion! that's all!

He simply choose answers in dialogues that didn't lead him in many places.

Character progression is done in dialogues with choices (we don't put this directly into your face), and is manually done via equipment, and last with a skillssystem like in Dungeon Master!
And how that works, once and for all? simple, you can expect that by virtue or just using a skill, you can be between about x2 and x3 effective with it, by the end of the game. Aeon of Sands is not about creating superheroes. You don't like that? Ok, fine. But we never said, not once, anything different in our presentation: this is the story of a lowly gardener, not of any Mighty Chosen One.

Inventory is larger than most old classics with 25 slot. Second you don't need to harvest all things you find. The aim is to choose what you need. I concede that, for people with harvesting obsessions, it's clearly the wrong game :) (and we never hid that, during development or after).

The character doesn't constantly break the fourth wall.
Theres' more of that in the intro, and then it's toned down.

And, even when meta happens, it's not the character that break this wall, it's the narrator, basically me. So, now you have a better target for criticism.

Under the skin of a silly tone that I often use, we are narrating a very serious breakdown of the main character, or, in the best case, his crysis, and more so, how that and his own view interacts with a struggle of civilization and society. If you read and play through the game, you can find these things, or disregard them completely, you are entitled to.
But they are there.
 
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marcuz

Two Bits Kid
Developer
Joined
Mar 11, 2015
Messages
47
Location
Italy
Narrator breaking the fourth wall in a game like this was a terrible idea
Ok, why?

Aside the fact that it happens in the intro, - for good reasons: as a way to convey directly the basics of the way you can play the game, - a part that you could skip entirely, and in a couple of other intentionally surreal dialogues, among >150, so, basically in a very small part of the > 80.000 words long story, why should not the narrator break the fourth wall?

And more importantly, what other games like this you are indicating? We think there are no games like this. The game itself is built around the concept of the narrative shaping the path: I'm not aware of other dungeon crawling looking games dialogue based, where the dialogues themselves are not there to pet the superheroic fantasy of the player.

You can say that it has flaws, which it's true: no game is perfect, certainly not AoS, or that you don't like the humour (to each his own); or that you don't like the whole game, its graphics, sounds, whatever: ok, in that case I'm sorry we wasted your, as a player, time.

But not that it fails to conform to some genre standard we are not even agreeing on, as we didn't even aim to make a game like that in the first place!
 
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