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

V_K

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And to think that I wasted all of my late teens on this crap... :dealwithit:
 

Cross

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I'm glad they're making a turn-based squad-based game rather than another clunky real-time blobber (with none of the atmosphere or charm of older blobbers).
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
MEGA-UPDATE: http://druidstone-game.com/christmas-mega-update

Evolution towards being a standard isometric RPG continues.

CHRISTMAS MEGA-UPDATE!

Ho ho ho! Welcome to the Druidstone development MEGA-UPDATE! As they say, time flies when you’re having fun, but it’s still hard to believe three months(!) have passed since the last blog update. So what have been up to lately? Well, many things, glad you asked!

Druidstone Editor
For instance, we now have a full fledged level editor, which allows us to make much more detailed levels. A year ago, when the game design was more heavily oriented towards procedurally generated content, we thought that we would not need a level editor at all. The levels were supposed to be mostly generated with some manually crafted rooms thrown in. But as development progressed, we felt the need to make more and more hand crafted locations and the need for a proper level editor arose. We will still keep adding new features to the editor, but as it is now, it’s ready for some prime time and we can start making new content with it.


Druidstone editor

Some highlights of the Druidstone editor:

– Seamless integration to the game, so we can start playing the edited level immediately by pressing a button, and also summon up the editor whenever we’re playing the game.

– Tools for quickly painting objects, e.g. trees, plants, grass, on the ground with mouse strokes.

– Heightmap and texture painting tools, including configurable brushes and smoothing.

– Compared to the editor we made for Legend of Grimrock, everything is now much more wysiwyg (what-you-see-is-what-you-get). For example, with the Grimrock editor you couldn’t see the effect of painting dungeon walls on the grid unless you hit the play button. Now we can just paint the walls and you immediately see them.

– Multi-level undo/redo. Pretty basic thing but nonetheless crucial to have.

More monsters!
Apart from the editor we also have made a bunch of new monsters, some of which have been featured in our Twitter feed. Here’s the screenshot of the Basilisk and some others behind the scenes material, in case you have missed them. We’ll probably keep updating Facebook and Twitter more frequently than this blog, so if you’re not already following us on social media and have been missing our updates, you know what to do


Basilisk monster concept


The Basilisk in game. Good luck fellas!


Eoten tribesmen


The winter has come to the Menhir Forest!

Oh, and talking about the new content, check out that new location and environment set above that we have been working on. It brings to the game much needed variation to the summery forests and dungeons you have been so far. And as I write this, Juho is already working on yet another completely new environment, which we’ll feature later as the work progresses. As you can probably guess from the screenshot, the world of Druidstone, the Menhir Forest is a magical place with several different kinds of areas with unique feel to them.

Battle music teaser
Some other highlights of development lately are the new outstanding musical masterpieces we have received from Scoring Helsinki. When done properly, the music really is at least half of the soul of any game, and the guys at Scoring Helsinki really know how to pull the right strings (pun intended!) and constantly surprise us with new awesome pieces. Receiving a new music drop from them feel always like opening a christmas present, so we thought it would be proper to share some of the fun with you guys! So enjoy this small glimpse into the musical side of Druidstone. It’s still work in progress, i.e. not fully mastered to the quality of the final version, but here it is, a small teaser of the battle music:

We also have added fourth playable character to the game and it’s unlike any of the other characters we have. But this MEGA-UPDATE is already getting long and the holidays are luring us in with the promises of feasts, winter wonderlands, red fat bearded men, presents and all…

So there you have it! The Druidstone team wishes you an awesome new year and merry winter solstice! See you next year!

 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
They reveal the fourth "playable character" here - a wolf:

 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

theSavant

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"Telling a story in a dungeon crawler was difficult because you cannot really see the main characters, other than the small portraits in the corner of the screen"

Uhm... what?! Total bullshit.

What he probably wanted to say is that they couldn't integrate "immersive cinematic cutscenes" like in Dragon Age, Mass Effect, etc. for every fucking dialogue :mad:
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
We've seen three characters in screenshots so far. Leonhard the main character is the guy in the green cloak and apparently a druid. The little guy is Oiko the mage, and the redhead girl with the bow is the dryad I guess?
 

Mebrilia the Viera Queen

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That looks indeed very interesting... Hope will have a character creator and will not have fixed protagonists
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
https://enklawanetwork.pl/pc/podlup...s-druidstone-the-secret-of-the-menhir-forest/

Forests, druids and reincarnation - Juho Salila talks Druidstone: The Secret of the Menhir Forest

Legend of Grimrock games happened to be a breath of fresh air for dungeon crawler subgenre. But after releasing two games in this series a few members of Almost Human, developers of aforementioned titles, formed a new studio called Ctrl Alt Ninja to build a completely new project: Druidstone. What is it? Why Grimrock’s devs decided to walk this path? Juho Salila, one of the core members of the team, answers these and many more questions in our brand new interview!

EnklawaNetwork.pl: Most members of Ctrl Alt Ninja worked in Almost Human studio on Legend of Grimrock games. Both of these games felt successful and gamers seemed to want more of it, but instead of sequel you decided to work on a completely different franchise as a completely different studio. The question everybody asks now is simple: „why”?

Juho Salila: Grimrock games were a huge success to us and we are aware that a lot of people would like to see Legend of Grimrock 3. We poured our hearts and souls into Grimrock 2 and the game has pretty much all we want in a dungeon crawler. Making Grimrock 3 right after Grimrock 2 would have felt that we would be repeating ourselves, so that's why we decided that a small break from game development would be nice to have. During the break we could charge our creative batteries and gather ideas for a new game. Time passed and when Petri [Ed. Note: Häkkinen, one of the designers of the original Grimrock] and I felt the itch for making a new game, some members of the original Grimrock team were already tied with another projects. Because not everyone was involved, it was natural to start a new studio called Ctrl Alt Ninja. Currently Ctrl Alt Ninja has three members of the original Grimrock team and it may be possible that some other familiar faces will jump on board if we can sort out the schedules. At Ctrl Alt Ninja we started prototyping new game ideas and finally after seven game prototypes we ended up with Druidstone. Druidstone combines the best parts of RPGs, boardgames and tactical combat games that we love so much.

EN: Grimrock games gained you a lot of fans eager to play your next game. Have you ever thought about using this power for a crowdfunding purpose?

JS: Yes, we've thought about crowdfunding, but Finnish legislation makes crowdfunding a bit tricky and you can't start Kickstarter campaign in Finland. While crowdfunding may get you started, it's still a lot of work when done properly and all that work is taken away from actual game development.

EN: How’s development of Druidstone going? I guess it’s a lot of easier job having two successful releases under your belt.

JS: The Druidstone development is going very well. There's still a lot to do, but we're making a good progress and the game is getting better in every iteration. I wouldn't say it's any easier work with two Grimrock games under our belts. Every game is different and has it's own difficult problems to solve and at times Druidstone feels more difficult to do than Grimrock, because with Grimrocks we had more straight forward base to build on. But of course the experience we've gained over the years makes some things easier.

EN: Let’s jump into the game itself. A typical fantasy druid is a spellcaster focused on nature powers, who has a close animal friend (or even shares a spirit with him) and often is also a shapeshifter. Speaking lore-wise, how much of this description is accurate to the druids from Druidstone? How much do you rely on Gaelic tradition and its folk tales about the druids?

JS: Druids in Druidstone are definitely inspired of Gaelic tradition, but we didn't want to limit ourselves to the traditional or stereotypical fantasy druids, so we are definitely making some creative decisions. You could say druids in Druidstone are our own interpretation mixing things from the real world, RPGs and our own ideas. We chose a druid as the lead character because it's not the most common character you see in games. They have a certain aura of mysticism around them and they are quite versatile character type that's not limited into doing just one thing. But that isn't to say we're going to abandon all the cool stuff druids are known for.

EN: How many paths do we have to develop the main character? How they differ from each other?

JS: Like said above, we are not limiting our druid to the typical frame or to some particular character class. Our skill system will be quite flexible, meaning that even though Leonhard, the main character, may start as a more combat oriented character, he may learn to cast spells as the game progresses, though he may not be as powerful as a mage, but the possibility will be there. Of course Leonhard will not be traveling alone. Our druid will be accompanied by other party members, who have unique skill sets. Currently we have three playable characters in the game, the druid, a dryad and a mage, each with different personalities and abilities. The druid is more focused on combat, the mage is a more traditional spellcaster and the dryad is a healing/supporting character, though she packs quite a punch. We will add more characters as development progresses.

EN: The Menhir Forest is inhabited not only by druids, but also by different factions, right? Can you share some informations about them?

JS: There's plenty of life in Menhir Forest. Our main character finds friends from unexpected places and naturally foes lurk in the dark places of the forest. Additionally to the other party members, player encounters characters like the Traveler, the Scientist, members of the Druid Circle and other dwellers of the forest. Druidstone's locations aren't limited only to the green and lush Menhir Forest. The story also takes the player to cold snowy mountains and to a frozen monastery that holds a terrible past, and other places that we don't want to reveal just yet.

EN: What’s a maximum size of our party? Will playing solo be a viable option to finish the game?

JS: Currently the party size is four characters that player meets along the way. We may still add more characters to the party, but we'll have to see how it fits the gameplay. Playing the game solo isn't very probable option because we have a strong emphasis on the story of the characters.

EN: Contrary to Grimrock games, the world of Druidstone is going to be procedurally generated in some parts. How does it affect gameplay?

JS: We indeed began developing Druidstone to be procedurally generated. But as the game started to take its shape and the story we wanted to tell was becoming more prominent, it made the level generation much more difficult, so we've toned down the procedurality. At the moment we have a system that randomizes and joins premade areas. We'll have to see in the end how much there will be authored and randomized content. We'll adjust the balance according to what makes the game most fun to play.

EN: One of most interesting things about Druidstone is concept of reincarnation. Can you tell us a bit more about how it works?

JS: The reincarnation is an essential part of being a druid. Every time a druid dies, he is brought back by a mysterious force to keep the balance of the druid cycle and the number of druids intact... The reincarnation plays a big part in the story of Druidstone and we don't want to reveal too much of it yet. It's all a big mystery and there are many surprises waiting. Without revealing too much, it's safe to say the world of Druidstone, the Menhir Forest is made of figments of reality called 'Seeds'. When the game starts there's been a disturbance in the Seed structure and the Archdruid is also missing. That's when the player steps into the shoes of a freshly reincarnated Leonhard who needs to investigate what is happening.

EN: Ok, I won’t be requesting for spoilers, but how does reincarnation work from a mechanic perspective? It seems that death in Druidstone doesn’t end up with a simple ‘GAME OVER’ screen...

JS: The reincarnation is strongly linked into the game's story and gameplay. Though the player may reincarnate, it doesn't mean that the player is immortal: ”game over” is still a possibility.

EN: It’s probably too early to make a release date announcements, but maybe you have a timeframe you’re aiming at?

JS: We don't have a set release date. We want to make sure we craft the best possible game, so we don't want to limit ourselves this early to a set release date.

EN: PC platform is your top priority now, but can we expect to play Druidstone on any other OS / device in the future?

JS: We're currently focusing on PC-version full on. Any possible ports most probably will happen after the initial release simply because we lack the manpower to do multiple platforms simultaneously. But we've been thinking that Druidstone would work nicely on portable devices as the turn based gameplay and simple and easy to use user interface are pretty good match with them.

EN: Thank you for your time and good luck with the development of Druidstone!
 

Sinatar

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Pulling back on the proc gen is great news. I hate proc gen games.
 

Abu Antar

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Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth


Druidstone moves from preproduction to production

This is big! As you may have been able to read between the lines, the development process of Druidstone hasn’t been all roses and butterflies. What I mean is that there has been some uncertainty with the project which has made it hard to communicate clearly what the game is truly about. That’s because up until now we have been in pre-production mode where we still try ideas and see what works and what doesn’t. But now that has changed. We know exactly what we are doing now.

That means that many things in the game which we have mentioned in the initial blog posts have changed. Actually, so much that the game as it is now and how it will develop in the coming months does not resemble the one displayed in old blog posts that much. Sure, we still have the same basic premise, the same environments, the top-down view and tactical combat, but the spirit of the game has changed. Has evolved, if you will. What started as a procedurally generated RPG has transformed and will transform into a much more tightly focused game.

So what exactly has changed? Here are the main points:
  • Procedural generation is gone. Long live the editor! Every map and every encounter will be handcrafted.
  • Focus on deep and tactical combat system. We want to make the combat really challenging so that every action you make every turn is a careful choice. Like playing chess with fantasy characters.
  • Focus on fun gameplay mechanics. We are not writing a book, not filming a movie, we are making a game, and gameplay is king.
  • No fluff. We want to make a tightly focused game, the same design principle we had with Grimrock. No filler content. Less is more. Or as Antoine de Saint-Exupery puts it famously “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
During the last year, iteration by iteration, the amount of procedurally generated content has been diminishing. At some point we had to ask ourselves what point does the procedural generation have anymore. That was when we started working on the editor, and after that pieces have started to click into place very fast. Last week was the real kicker and we could produce a near shippable quality 30 minute segment of the game in just a couple of days. That’s huge! It’s very rare that we can make such a big leap in just a couple of days.

But the main difference is really inside our heads. We now understand exactly what kind of game we really, really want to make. Sometimes when analysing the markets and looking at what kind of games are the topsellers, and worrying about the doom and gloom of indie developers, it’s easy to forget what your heart really desires. But if you listen carefully to yourself, you can perhaps hear a faint whisper. And if you keep listening to that inner voice, the voice gets louder, until it becomes a great booming voice that makes your bones shiver and skin tingle with determination: “YOU GOTTA MAKE THIS GAME!”

Listening to yourself is the greatest and most important skill a game developer can have. This is hugely important, but difficult to explain why. It’s the thing that guides us through the development process and tells us what the game needs and what it doesn’t. It’s the vision what the game is really about.

This is such an important milestone for us because now we have confidence in that this game will be great. It makes us want to pour all the love, sweat and energy we have to make the best game we absolutely can.

Speaking from personal experience, I’ve only had a similar feeling once before. That was when I was working on Grimrock 1. Believe it or not, Grimrock 1 was made in less than a year, from scratch to release. Looking back at it, I still don’t quite get how we managed to do it in such a short time. But the answer is, of course, simple: we had a clear vision from the start and we worked our asses off to make it happen. Now that same feeling is back and we are really relieved, happy, motivated and excited at the same time. Making a game hasn’t been this fun in many years!

In hindsight maybe setting up this dev blog in such an early stage of the project wasn’t the wisest idea, but we have always striven to maintain an open, honest and transparent view into the dev process. Mainly because we think it’s the right thing to do but also because (hopefully!) it’s interesting to follow us as we tread on the uncharted paths.

That said, as we now move into production mode (making the game in our heads come true!), we are going to take a break from updating this blog. That’s because we want to focus 200% on the game we’re creating. But when we do come back (and we will!) we will present to you Druidstone, the real deal. That’s a promise!
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Believe it or not, Grimrock 1 was made in less than a year, from scratch to release.

WTF? He must be using a very limited definition here because as I recall the project that became Grimrock dragged on over years and years under different names.

Anyway, no surprise at the complete removal of procgen, we've seen this coming for months.
 

Bara

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Question was asked about how turn order is determined in the comments section of the last blog post.

Devs responded with:
In Druidstone the turns alternate. On the heroes’ turn, you can activate heroes in any order. You can even interrupt your actions, switch to another hero and then come back to the original hero. The order how you activate heroes and who goes where and when is crucial for winning. On the enemy turn, all enemies activate in the order determined by he AI.
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
:necro:

http://druidstone-game.com/hot-summer-2018-dev-update

Hot Summer 2018 Dev Update

Hi! How are you, folks? Here’s a quick dev update before we head off to summer holidays!

The last update is already from February and quite a lot has happened since, as you’d expect. For instance, the guys have been cranking out new enemies at stellar speed and the enemy gallery is now up to whopping 37 enemy types, not counting variations. That’s a lot considering our art team consist only of our dynamic duo, Juho and Jyri who are modeling and animating all the monsters!

On the gameplay side we’ve been concentrating on building the length of the game in the form of new levels. Our current goal is to hit alpha, which is perhaps the second most important milestone for us (the most important, of course, is shipping the game). Alpha in our terminology means getting the game to a state where it can be played from start to finish without nothing major missing. The sooner we can hit alpha the better, because then we have more time to polish everything and make the game really great. We are not quite in alpha yet, as we need more playable levels to get there. That said, the first half of the game is pretty much in playable condition and the very last segment of the game is also done. Now we just have to fill in the gaps and then we can start adding new playable characters, side missions, secrets, new abilities and items, etc.

On the coding side we have progressed on multiple fronts as well. For example, the game now has a proper main menu and savegame system. We have also added a world map mode, where the party travels between adventuring sites. All in all, with these additions it’s starting to feel like a real game!

Ability System
Among many other things the ability system has been worked on. We haven’t really explained how the ability system of Druidstone works, so here’s a quick intro. Characters can have two kind of abilities: passive and active. Every character starts with a basic selection of abilities and you buy new abilities and upgrade existing ones with XP. Instead of a more traditional mana/energy point system, every active ability can be used a certain number of times per battle. For instance, one of Leonhard’s starting abilities is Whirlwind and his level in that ability is initially 2, so he can use Whirlwind to attack all adjacent creatures up to 2 times per battle. Using XP he can upgrade the ability to next level to add 1 more use of the ability, or he could spend the XP to purchase an entirely different new ability. The characters themselves have no concept of level; the power level of heroes is entirely determined by the abilities and equipment they possess.

We like this system a lot because it’s very explicit and simple yet very flexible and powerful. You can see at a glance which abilities you can use and how many times. Choosing when to use abilities is pretty tricky and key to winning battles!

Parting Shot
Every now and then we receive questions about whether we have any crowd funding options or if there’s any other way to support the development of this game. It’s super, super awesome to hear that people are willing to support us in this way! Crowd funding is unfortunately rather tricky in Finland due to legislation and would anyway probably take too much time away from finishing the game. However, we have been talking internally about the possibility of having some sort of paid beta / early access for those who want to support us. We have never done one before, but we have had very successful closed betas for Grimrock. Naturally if we would have a beta program, the game would need to be near shipping quality (we being very allergic to showing unfinished stuff!). If successful, it would allow us to spend a bit more time polishing the game and perhaps have a bigger budget for outsourcing stuff like music and sound effects. It could potentially also help in increasing the awareness of this project before it ships. On the other hand the whole “paid beta” thing seem to have a negative connotation caused by some projects taking ages to get from beta to shipping.

Anyway, we haven’t decided anything yet, other than we are open to this option and we’d like to hear your opinion on this. So what do you think? If you are open to the idea and would be willing to pay for beta access, what would be a proper price range for a closed beta? Naturally those participating would get the shipping version at no extra cost. And if this sounds like a terrible idea, we’d like to know as well.

So there you have it. In parting I’ll just drop these two sneak peeks, one of a new playable character and another one from the ruins of Arken Temple deep in the Menhir Forest. Enjoy and have a great summer…or winter for those on the other side! See ya!



 
Joined
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No idea why they changed Leonhard's portrait. The original was much better.
 

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