Indie Skullstone - a 3d grid-based dungeon crawler, inspired by Dungeon Master, Stonekeep, LoG, Ishar etc.

[FrozenShade]

or any of the plethora of other real-time square-dancers?

Because square-dancing should not be a winning fighting style for 100% of enemies in game. By giving mobs abilities to slow down, paralyze, stun and AoE attacks we removed the main problem with boring fight in this kind of games - thanks to Rpgcodex community for bringing our attention to this problem some time ago.
And there will be more situations where player find himself surrounded by enemies without the possibility to lure one single mob to some safe location.

 

[Infinitron]

DarkUnderlord Devtag for Anna Bury and FrozenShade (Black Torch Games)

 

[FrozenShade]

Anna Bury is not working with us anymore.

 

[Infinitron]

Spotted by LESS T_T:

An ancient structure, long buried under Lisenian woods, is slowly rising as if summoned by an unknown force. Atop of it, stands Skullstone stands – the dreaded entrance into the darkness below. Evil creatures emerge from the under-realm, killing brave men and women, snatching the elderly and the helpless children. While the local monks waste time praying in their monastery, pondering on how to deal with the fiendish infestation, the mayor of the town of Lisentar takes matters in his own hands, calling for mercenaries.

Choose from a roster of 20 characters, each with different set of skills and abilities. Tough warriors, agile archers, healing clerics, and powerful wizards are all waiting for your call. Gather your party and lead it into the Skullstone dungeon. Accept quests, kill monsters, find treasures and claim rewards. Develop your mercenaries to survive the dangers hidden in the darkness, progress through different levels and prepare to face the ultimate evil! You know, same old story... or is it?

Published by Hyperstrange.

 

[Infinitron]

New trailer uploaded to YouTube:

Skullstone is a true to its form dungeon crawler with grid-based movement, real-time tactics combat, and first-person view. Lead a party of adventurers into the under-realm, looking for glory, gold, and a solution to the ancient evil plaguing the town above. Well, adventurer? Get crawling!

An ancient structure, long buried under Lisenian woods, is slowly rising as if summoned by an unknown force. Atop of it, stands Skullstone stands – the dreaded entrance into the darkness below. Evil creatures emerge from the under-realm, killing brave men and women, snatching the elderly and the helpless children. While the local monks waste time praying in their monastery, pondering on how to deal with the fiendish infestation, the mayor of the town of Lisentar takes matters in his own hands, calling for mercenaries.

Choose from a roster of 20 characters, each with different set of skills and abilities. Tough warriors, agile archers, healing clerics, and powerful wizards are all waiting for your call. Gather your party and lead it into the Skullstone dungeon. Accept quests, kill monsters, find treasures and claim rewards. Develop your mercenaries to survive the dangers hidden in the darkness, progress through different levels and prepare to face the ultimate evil! You know, same old story... or is it?

 

[mindx2]

Lame attempt at humor with that voice over.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Isn't that the same trailer? If it hit gog I'd buy it eventually. What about that other developer game in thus thread?

It just look good enough for me, i like the music too, but its not at the level of grimrock yet. Ive seen last year a much better looking project failing on indiegogo and the amount requested was very low, they are entering early access soon so there's still some hope of success (28 september):

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dungeon-kingdom-sign-of-the-moon#/story


If its an hobby and you dont expect to make a living from it go for it ill play it with pleasure. But like others i must warn you, if grimrock 2, a near perfect game, sold less than the first one, if dungeons kingdoms collect barely 3000 euros, that means you will need to do it with your own money with a small hope of sales as the market for this kind of games is extremely small. The bar on dungeon crawlers is set extremely high now .

What happened to Anna?

 

[Denim Destroyer]

I didn't see anyone mention it but this game apparently has a demo. I played until the second level where the game crashed and I have no desire to replay back to that point.
Anyways the demo does not inspire confidence towards the final product (if it ever is released considering how old this thread is). The developer clearly was inspired by the first Grimrock game but somehow managed to not improve the games faults while introducing new issues. I played for an hour and encountered enough issues to fill out quite a lengthy post on here but to keep things succinct I will just make a list so view at your own discretion.

• For some reason you cannot undo putting a skill in a level like in Grimrock 1 so not clicking on the wrong skills is paramount. INB4 "just pay attention" this is an incredibly minor quality of life thing that Grimrock 2 had so there is no reason for it to not be here.
• Skills only increase by a few percentage points per level so to see any meaningful changes requires leveling a skill eight or so times. AKA the Diablo style of minor incremental changes that make leveling up feel nonspecial
• Unless the game does not tell you about it there are no new spells or melee abilities after reaching level milestones which is important to your character feeling stronger.
• Instead of offering a character creator this game makes you pick from a list of predefined characters before starting. Building characters from the ground is a core aspect to the RPG genre so limiting me to a roster of twenty predefined characters is a negative in my book
• Casting a spell can simply be achieved by clicking on your mages staff. Why of all things to remove from your Grimrock clone you would chose the runic spellcasting is beyond me. The stress of typing out the correct runes added a sense of danger and fun to Grimrock.
• Stonekeep is not a pretty game, everything looks blurry and began to hurt my eyes after awhile. I was thinking of taking a break due to this but thankfully the game crashed.
• I hope that the first level is not an indicator of the level design quality in the full game. The level is just a series of large open square rooms with occasional halls branching out. Level design is important in any game but especially a dungeon crawler.
• Not being able to put small containers into larger containers is an annoying restriction. Why bother carrying a box around if you cannot stuff it with bags?
• This game does not need a minimap present at all times if it also has a full map viewable after pressing tab.
• I only mention this because the developer was adamant players wouldn't do it. You can in fact dance around enemies in this game and due to how open it appears to be there is little reason not to.

Overall considering how long this has been in development with an alleged release date of next year I am going ahead and doubting that these issues will be addressed let alone fixed. Try the demo if curious otherwise stick with Grimrock.

 

[DemonKing]

Demo is up on Steam (hope you like killing rats):

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1693290/Skullstone/

So far I don't think Grimrock has a lot to be afraid of but it seems passable enough if you're into the genre. Would be nice if you could reconfigure the keys and it supported fairly standard ultrawide and 4K resolutions...

 

[Infinitron]

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Again, a thread I had forgotten. Is that Infinitron in the game?