KickStarter Monomyth - A first person action RPG/dungeon crawler - now in Open Backer Beta

[RatTower]

I've been looking for more and more games like this and its sad how difficult it is to find good ones. I am waiting for this game with baited breath.

Rattower, you seems well versed, any indie games similar to yours that I might be missing?

There really aren't too many "open dungeon" first person RPGs. Which is part of the reason why I'm making this.
Most indie dungeon crawlers that aren't blobbers are procedurally generated roguelikes/lites (like Delver or Barony or Crimsons Keep or Slasher's Keep, etc).

There is barely a dozen of handcrafted ones and many shy away from indepth character mechanics or too much freedom.
There is Windscape which is more like a first person zelda game though - it's not really a dungeon crawler either.
Then there is the newly released Mask of Mists, which is more of a puzzle-focused action adventure, but there is combat and there are dungeons I guess.
Then there is Project Dagger/Undaunted, which looks cool, but apparently it's going more into a Hexen-styled direction.
There is King's of Lorn, but I believe that's more of a regular, level by level action game (I haven't played it).
There is Gloomwood, which is by the company that did Dusk and it's more like a Thief-esque game.
There is Modus Interactive - a guy who is apparently making a King's Field-like named "Call of the Empyrean" and generally small PS1 styled projects.
There is Spellfist - a dungeon based action game.
There is Isles of Adalar, which is clearly more of an RPG than many others in this list, but its trying to do more of a Morrowind-esque open world thing.
Then there was Castle Torgeath as well as Dungeons & Darkness.
Then there is one physics based small scale project called Neverlooted Dungeons.
And then there are some Sword of Moonlight-based projects like the ones by MasterTaffer and a "part conversion/modification" called Moratheia.
And last but not least, there is Fighting Fantasy DS: The Warlock of Firetop Mountain, which isn't really an indie game (i think) but still worth mentioning.

So, the spirit of Ultima Underworld somehow haunts all of these projects, but none really capture it fully (or really try, I guess).
And that's the reason why I'm making Monomyth. Because besides the big three (UU,Arx,KF) there really isn't much there.

Oh yeah, there is also Underworld Ascendant.

Spoiler

 

[V_K]

Because besides the big three (UU,Arx,KF) there really isn't much there.

You don't include the System Shock lineage in that subgenre?

 

[RatTower]

Sure, but I was thinking more in terms of fantasy games that feature some sort of real-time melee combat.

 

[Technomancer]

any indie games similar to yours that I might be missing?

Exanima man! It is not first person, and the entry skill threshold is very high but it's a prime dungeon crawling experience.

Spoiler

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/sui-generis-exanima-early-access.77528/

It was my instant association when I first saw Monomyth and I wanted to try out Monomyth asap. Was not deemed worthy for the beta test sadly.

;The games are very different but people who constantly demand first person in Exanima should definitely put Monomyth on their radar.

 

[ColCol]

any indie games similar to yours that I might be missing?

Exanima man! It is not first person, and the entry skill threshold is very high but it's a prime dungeon crawling experience.

Spoiler

https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/sui-generis-exanima-early-access.77528/

It was my instant association when I first saw Monomyth and I wanted to try it out asap. Was not deemed worthy for the beta test sadly.

;The games are very different but people who constantly demand first person in Exanima should definitely put Monomyth on their radar.

Really? IT seemed like it was a mix of just fight ecounters and a tech demo. Does it have exploring, loot , etc.

 

[Technomancer]

Really? IT seemed like it was a mix of just fight ecounters and a tech demo. Does it have exploring, loot , etc.

Sui Generis as a game idea is just a tech demo and does not exist yet. Exanima is a full single-player game in early access. It's about 73% complete with most things in to provide the experience. It got lore, environmental storytelling, exploration (in places there are traps, puzzles and hidden doors and secret treasures), random loot, and rare items that are unique. Unique in a sense of being one of kind and unique in implementation game design-wise. For example, you can find a

Spoiler

brittle bone

sword

Spoiler

with ultra-sharp edge that breaks with use and requires healing crystals to grow back

or you can find

Spoiler

medieval power armor.

Not often you can experience something fresh with magical items in fantasy games. There are good old plain maces/swords of shocking/flaming +3 too. Usually they are hidden behind so much bullshit that you don't need them if you have the skill to actually reach them though.

Since you get the most Xp for exploration and reading lore, fighting is completely optional and with newly added mind control magic mostly avoidable. First 3 levels of the dungeon are tutorial-like and samey with enemies who can't block and with bad protection but past 3 true exploration starts of a very different place... Unfortunately, most people drop it early scared by the difficulty/controls or give up past level 3 where the difficulty skyrockets along with exploration.

There is also a stand-alone arena to keep you busy and to train. If you have more questions, ask me in Exanima thread, I don't want to derail Monomyth further.

 

[V_K]

For example, you can find a

Spoiler

brittle bone

sword

Spoiler

with ultra-sharp edge that breaks with use and requires healing crystals to grow back

Glass swords were a staple of Ultima games.

 

[ColCol]

Really? IT seemed like it was a mix of just fight ecounters and a tech demo. Does it have exploring, loot , etc.

Sui Generis as a game idea is just a tech demo and does not exist yet. Exanima is a full single-player game in early access. It's about 73% complete with most things in to provide the experience. It got lore, environmental storytelling, exploration (in places there are traps, puzzles and hidden doors and secret treasures), random loot, and rare items that are unique. Unique in a sense of being one of kind and unique in implementation game design-wise. For example, you can find a

Spoiler

brittle bone

sword

Spoiler

with ultra-sharp edge that breaks with use and requires healing crystals to grow back

or you can find

Spoiler

medieval power armor.

Not often you can experience something fresh with magical items in fantasy games. There are good old plain maces/swords of shocking/flaming +3 too. Usually they are hidden behind so much bullshit that you don't need them if you have the skill to actually reach them though.

Since you get the most Xp for exploration and reading lore, fighting is completely optional and with newly added mind control magic mostly avoidable. First 3 levels of the dungeon are tutorial-like and samey with enemies who can't block and with bad protection but past 3 true exploration starts of a very different place... Unfortunately, most people drop it early scared by the difficulty/controls or give up past level 3 where the difficulty skyrockets along with exploration.

There is also a stand-alone arena to keep you busy and to train. If you have more questions, ask me in Exanima thread, I don't want to derail Monomyth further.

ooh, okay, now you have my interest.

 

[V_K]

Really? IT seemed like it was a mix of just fight ecounters and a tech demo. Does it have exploring, loot , etc.

Sui Generis as a game idea is just a tech demo and does not exist yet. Exanima is a full single-player game in early access. It's about 73% complete with most things in to provide the experience. It got lore, environmental storytelling, exploration (in places there are traps, puzzles and hidden doors and secret treasures), random loot, and rare items that are unique. Unique in a sense of being one of kind and unique in implementation game design-wise. For example, you can find a

Spoiler

brittle bone

sword

Spoiler

with ultra-sharp edge that breaks with use and requires healing crystals to grow back

or you can find

Spoiler

medieval power armor.

Not often you can experience something fresh with magical items in fantasy games. There are good old plain maces/swords of shocking/flaming +3 too. Usually they are hidden behind so much bullshit that you don't need them if you have the skill to actually reach them though.

Since you get the most Xp for exploration and reading lore, fighting is completely optional and with newly added mind control magic mostly avoidable. First 3 levels of the dungeon are tutorial-like and samey with enemies who can't block and with bad protection but past 3 true exploration starts of a very different place... Unfortunately, most people drop it early scared by the difficulty/controls or give up past level 3 where the difficulty skyrockets along with exploration.

There is also a stand-alone arena to keep you busy and to train. If you have more questions, ask me in Exanima thread, I don't want to derail Monomyth further.

ooh, okay, now you have my interest.

Just keep in mind that it's apparently a game that takes hundreds of years hours to learn to play:

I coudn't learn advanced moves after 23 hours in game.
The point is I expecting I won't at all because if I coudn't in 23 hours then...

You still could be. I'm judging by my own experience and I consider myself only somewhat hardcore. I was still bad on 75 mark. On 100 I started to feel confident enough to try stuff out in combat but since I played for fun and never watched any tutorials I was still kinda bad, I couldn't do thrust or god forbid Left to Right swing and was mad at the dev who said he can do it reliably 9 times out 10. I was certain that that was a lie and this maneuver should be rebinded to do it easier. Now at 400h mark I can indeed make it 9 out of 10 and don't see the problem anymore. The one-hit kills and homerun swings as I did in the gif above I learned only after 250h, not by tutorials or guides, just by simple observation on what I'm doing good. I did not even knew it was possible untill it suddenly became my favorite move.

 

[Technomancer]

a game that takes hundreds of years hours to learn to play:

To fight well. No need to fight by yourself with mind control magic.

 

[V_K]

So magic is the easy mode? It just kinda defeats the purpose then - they've spent so many years on the combat system, but if it takes that many hours to learn and magic doesn't, every new player will just play a mage, and all that work on combat will go to waste. Which I guess is a cautionary tale.

 

[ColCol]

So magic is the easy mode? It just kinda defeats the purpose then - they've spent so many years on the combat system, but if it takes that many hours to learn and magic doesn't, every new player will just play a mage, and all that work on combat will go to waste. Which I guess is a cautionary tale.

You'r right, here's my idea, lets male magic require the use of complex hand signs that take hours to learn.

 

[Technomancer]

So magic is the easy mode? It just kinda defeats the purpose then - they've spent so many years on the combat system, but if it takes that many hours to learn and magic doesn't, every new player will just play a mage, and all that work on combat will go to waste. Which I guess is a cautionary tale.

You still have to learn it. All OP spells are up in the tree and without 5 starting skills it can take a while to unlock them. But yeah, it is easy mode, and not only that but there is a possibility that the dev will make an option for AI to take over in combat providing an alternative experience for people who just want to explore.

 

[forumvisitor#451]

Back to the topic - I love platforming sections, loved them in System Shock 2 or Thief. They make the world feel dangerous and alive. I would even say it is unrealistic and "gamey" when all areas are accessible on foot without any effort. It makes the world feel little "flat." I believe there will be plenty of ways how to overcome the obstacles, but I am glad they exist. If you don't think about it in terms of "platforming sections" - if they make sense in-world (like why wouldn't there be a dangerous inaccessible area in dungeon?), it's fine.

How do I contribute to this? And when and how can one get access?

 

[V_K]

I would even say it is unrealistic and "gamey" when all areas are accessible on foot without any effort.

Climbing, swimming, crawling, tightrope walking are all mighty fine and more games should have that. I can get behind rooftop-hopping in an urban area or jumping over an occasional chasm or a ditch in a dungeon. But jumping from narrow perch to narrow perch for extensive periods of time - who in their right mind would do that in real life?

f they make sense in-world

And how does a field of uniform pillars protruding from lava at regular intervals make sense in any world?

 

[Invictus]

Ultima Underworld had some plataforming, as well as Arx Fatalis had some interesting secrets if you looked around so I am very cool with some plataforming in Monomyth; every choice Rat Tower has made so far is keeping with the spirit of the original Dungeon crawlers that inspired this game so it should be alright

 

[V_K]

Arx Fatalis had some interesting secrets

Let me jog your memory: Arx Fatalis had the Dwarven kingdom - one of the absolutely worst platforming sections in RPG history. It's unskippable, it makes your character build mean jack shit, and it can only be completed through savescumming. That's the kind of spirit that should really be extinguished.

 

[Gangrelrumbler]

Arx Fatalis had some interesting secrets

Let me jog your memory: Arx Fatalis had the Dwarven kingdom - one of the absolutely worst platforming sections in RPG history. It's unskippable, it makes your character build mean jack shit, and it can only be completed through savescumming. That's the kind of spirit that should really be extinguished.

Wouldn't a character specializing in magic be able to simply fly over it?

 

[V_K]

Arx Fatalis had some interesting secrets

Let me jog your memory: Arx Fatalis had the Dwarven kingdom - one of the absolutely worst platforming sections in RPG history. It's unskippable, it makes your character build mean jack shit, and it can only be completed through savescumming. That's the kind of spirit that should really be extinguished.

Wouldn't a character specializing in magic be able to simply fly over it?

No because the whole fucking level is a no-magic area

 

[garren]

You mean the single platforming room in the dwarven compound? It wasn't that bad, though I played with Arx Libertatis which might have adjusted something. Still, it's just one room, couple of reloads maybe and it's over. I don't see the issue.

 

[RatTower]

How I see it, the dwarven section in Arx was mostly filler. You could tell that anything beyond level 6 was pretty underdesigned, perhaps because the project had to be scaled back. Ratmen were pretty underused as well - you could have had the cultists do their job in the plot instead - Level 7 was mostly combat encounters. What really made Arx were the first three or four locations: Goblin Prison, Outpost, the city of Arx and Goblin city. These had way more secrets, way more quests, better level design, etc, etc.

I have to check out the Arx Insanity mod. I'd like to see how they handled the lower levels.

The pillar section in that tweet was inspired by UU2's academy level. Which is an ok zone made worse by jumping controls. I tried to improve on that. We'll still see how it works out, since the acrobatics skill naturally struggles with similar problems as in UU - but at least you're not bouncing around like a rubber ball.

Either way, I started working on those modular NPCs I was already talking about last year:



I'm mostly designing areas and filling them with content these days. NPCs are part of that process. The animations are based on the generic UE4 skeleton. This way all NPCs can share a certain subset of animations (generic walk cycles, base movements like punching, etc). More importantly all regular humanoids share one animation class from now on.

So I'll fill the world with these modular dummies and then slowly replace them.

I'll probably rework the quest system a bit as well. It worked, but the architecture wasn't too intuitive.

 

[karnak]

Ultima Underworld had some plataforming, as well as Arx Fatalis had some interesting secrets if you looked around so I am very cool with some plataforming in Monomyth; every choice Rat Tower has made so far is keeping with the spirit of the original Dungeon crawlers that inspired this game so it should be alright

Truth be told, I just finished Ultima Underworld for the 3rd time some weeks ago (the last time I had played it was maybe 20 years ago). I was amazed how you can finish the game with so little platforming. Only 5 or 6 jumps on the first level (in order to reach the Human settlement and other things, likely designed in order to familiarize players with the jump mechanics) and that's mostly it. You can explore the levels by flying or swimming, secret passages, etc.

I'm not trying to contradict your statement. On the contrary - the first couple of times I played the game it almost seemed like I was playing Ultima 8 or Tomb Raider. It's just to emphasize that (and we're talking about a 28 years game) the game is so glorious and well designed that you can still manage to find different ways to reach your objectives.

EDIT: And you also needed to jump around in order to reach the first shrine, in level 1. But I think you could also reach it by swimming.

 

[garren]

How I see it, the dwarven section in Arx was mostly filler. You could tell that anything beyond level 6 was pretty underdesigned, perhaps because the project had to be scaled back. Ratmen were pretty underused as well - you could have had the cultists do their job in the plot instead - Level 7 was mostly combat encounters. What really made Arx were the first three or four locations: Goblin Prison, Outpost, the city of Arx and Goblin city. These had way more secrets, way more quests, better level design, etc, etc.

Yeah the rat level was just boring from the start, the first time I played it, I tried to speed through it as fast as possible after I realized that it's just combat encounters (though I wished I could have done something more with the ratmen). The worm part was cool though, just killing it was too easy. I also didn't really like the snake women part, they had these somewhat cool puzzles but nothing else, i just wanted to leave the place after a while.

I would have loved to just see more unexplored tunnels with different biomes with cool encounters and monsters inside, you know, this feeling of leaving the more "civilized" areas of the caves and delving deeper into the mysterious, maybe finding some ancient place with cool puzzles inside. I did kinda like the dwarf part though, it was a change in playstyle to suddenly have to escape from an indestructible monster, especially the first time as a played it when I didn't discover that you could kill it. In the end I did manage to trap it in the lowest level cave in the compound, from where it couldn't get back up anymore, maybe that was intended by the devs or not, who knows.

 

[V_K]

Truth be told, I just finished Ultima Underworld for the 3rd time some weeks ago (the last time I had played it was maybe 20 years ago). I was amazed how you can finish the game with so little platforming. Only 5 or 6 jumps on the first level (in order to reach the Human settlement and other things, likely designed in order to familiarize players with the jump mechanics) and that's mostly it. You can explore the levels by flying or swimming, secret passages, etc.

Arx is actually largely the same, I don't remember any other unavoidable platforming sequences there, and I don't remember too many optional ones either. But that sudden 180 turn in gameplay is what makes that section so infuriating.

You mean the single platforming room in the dwarven compound? It wasn't that bad, though I played with Arx Libertatis which might have adjusted something. Still, it's just one room, couple of reloads maybe and it's over. I don't see the issue.

It's not terribly long, but it's quite a bit more extensive than a single room:

Spoiler

START TO RUN - the creature is IMMUNE to physical attacks. You also cannot cast
magic, so that's worthless as well. Run straight and then make a left on the
first passage you see. Run down here, and then jump on the platforms across the
lava pool below. Once you're across, run down the winding halls until you reach
a dead end, with a dwarf's body. Search the corpse, take the 2 pieces of dwarf
flesh, power stone, key, and pretty much everything. You may hear a rumbling
occur, as if a cave-in happened. Start walking back the same way you came.
Suddenly, you'll see that scary beast which was chasing you before. There
should be a door a few feet in front of him on your left. Use the key you just
acquired, and run through QUICKLY. Keep going straight (ignore the passage to
the right), until you reach a room with a giant stomper in the middle. Walk
over to the power machine behind it, and combine the powerstone in the empty
socket. Now, climb the ladder, and run to the opposite side where a switch is.

This can be fairly tricky. Wait up there until the beast walks into the room.
Fortunately for you, it cannot reach you. Wait until it's looking at you, and
toss a piece of dwarven flesh under the stomper. Be patient. If the creatures
eats the piece you tossed (but wasn't under the stomper), throw another piece.
When the creature goes under the stomper (because of the flesh lure), hit the
switch, and he'll be stomped. Apparently, he died. Leap down, and then go in
the new passage that's to the left of where you came. You'll reach a dead end
room. Crouch under the right side, and search one of the drawers for a key. Hit
the lever as well. Next, go up the stairs and read the miner's logbook, plus
whatever else you can grab. Run back to the room with the dead creature, and
then go back the hall you came from before. This time, make a left where you
passed the place before. However, before you can reach the locked door at the
end of the hallway, that damn beast is alive again! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE back to
the stomper room. Unfortunately, you don't have any powerstones left. There
should be a switch against the wall between the two hallways. Wait for the
beast to come in range, then hit the switch. A lava pool will open up. He
should fall into it. If it doesn't work, you leap over it, then watch him
follow behind you right into it. Now the bloody beast is dead.

It's really some of the worst design decisions combined - you have to do it quick, you have to do it flawlessly, and you can only figure out what is it that you're supposed to do through trial-and-reload. Combined with the game suddenly throwing all RPG out of the window, it's just offensive.

 

[garren]

Ah you mean the whole escaping the beast part. I thought it was fine but, eh, to each his own.