Game News Aeon of Sands - The Trail Released

[Infinitron]

Tags: Aeon of Sands - The Trail; Two Bits Kid

Today's second release is Two Bits Kid's Aeon of Sands - The Trail. It's a surreal, story-driven dungeon crawler with CYOA elements and a comic book aesthetic, which has apparently been in development for six years. Pretty wild stuff. This is the sort of game the Codex should have paid more attention to, and probably would have if it wasn't a blobber (and a real-time one at that). It's not too late to make amends, though. Zed posted the release trailer back in October, so I'll just quote the game's description here:

Aeon of Sands – The Trail is a retro low fantasy RPG set in a post-apocalyptic world, with first person, grid-based exploration, puzzles, real-time combat, and a fully illustrated, non-linear, choose your story adventure.

The game follows the misadventures of a likeable slacker, who is suddenly thrown out of his cozy home into a terrible, infinite desert that seems to hate him.

Accompany the vain, nap-loving clerk Setrani through his first major adventure.
Guide him on his travels through a dangerous land, ravaged by the weather and by tribal conflicts. Struggle with him as the desert, wickedly, sets trap after trap on his path.

The story is driven by multiple-choice dialogues, in which you are repeatedly confronted with new absurd situations.
Based on your decisions, new areas can be explored while others become inaccessible, you meet new companions or make enemies of them.

It's basically Choose Your Own Adventure featuring Dungeon Crawling!

Press
“One of the most brilliant pieces of design I’ve seen in forever“ Rock, Paper, Shotgun

• Choose your path, or stumble around blindly! Let nonlinearity be your pal!
• Replay it! Do it differently all over, and still manage to sabotage civilisation!
• Travel the large desert like there's no tomorrow!
• Play with magic, which is most often as dangerous to you as to others!
• Face multiple endings, and more often, your own!
• Real-time combat
• 20 locations and more than 60 mazes and dungeons to explore
• More than 140 dialogues
• Completely hand drawn 2.5D environment, 240 hand-drawn illustrations
• Up to 2 other characters can join your party during play
• Each character’s personality influences the outcome of the story, and opens up new paths

You can grab Aeon of Sands on Steam for $20, with a 10% launch discount until next week. I'd like to hear some impressions - this game could be like the Disco Elysium of blobbers.

 

[Forest Dweller]

Pretty wild stuff. This is the sort of game the Codex should have paid more attention to, and probably would have if it wasn't a blobber (and a real-time one at that). It's not too late to make amends, though.

It's never too late. But do we want to?

 

[BlackAdderBG]

Blobber- can't find single screenshot with the character UI. Does it have any stats, abilities, character customization?

 

[Drowed]

Blobber- can't find single screenshot with the character UI. Does it have any stats, abilities, character customization?

From what I can see, the game doesn't have one. Clicking on your character's pic opens an inventory that allows you to put equipment on him, but only that. There doesn't seem to be a specific screen with character statistics, I'm not even sure if there are levels in the game. Some items have descriptions like "+2 STR" or "-20 Mana" but there doesn't seem to be a screen that shows your current values, which is at the very least strange.

The first 30 mins:


(But a real-time blobber is a pass for me anyways.)

 

[Agame]

Real time is a damn shame, but it has that Ishar 'janky-wierd-atmospheric' vibe so I am pretty excited about it!

 

[Skdursh]

(But a real-time blobber is a pass for me anyways.)

You don't like Might and Magic 6-8?

 

[thesheeep]

I'll be waiting for the linux version.
Too bad this is real-time, but it just looks too damn good not to play eventually.

 

[Slimu]

I bought the game, but only on Friday I can play it and return with some impressions.

 

[ManaJunkie]

Stats are there:

17 min 20 sec

 

[vorvek]

Played it a bit last night. There are 3 main stats (strength, dexterity? and magic?, don't remember the names) governing 3 point pools (hp, stamina, mana) and 3 main skills (sovereignty, accuracy and concentration) with a 4th skill called focus that seems to be related to some specific forms of magic. Weapons break, or at least, the rusty shanks you find in the first dungeon break. Enemy AI is a bit weird, and a lot of times they'll move a bit erratically past you instead of trying to attack.

There's a bit of choose your own adventure like fluff, but at least, during the intro, doesn't really allow you to choose anything other than "yeah, let's go". You can get barely a bit of extra fluff, but the setting is not too detailed, and the game jokes about it calling two cities that get names during the first conversation "plot devices" when asking for more info on them.

 

[V_K]

There's a bit of choose your own adventure like fluff, but at least, during the intro, doesn't really allow you to choose anything other than "yeah, let's go". You can get barely a bit of extra fluff, but the setting is not too detailed, and the game jokes about it calling two cities that get names during the first conversation "plot devices" when asking for more info on them.

There are some more immediately obvious choices later on, and some of the minor stuff you do at the marketplace has consequences down the line. I think this aspect of the game shapes up to be quite deep.

4th skill called focus that seems to be related to some specific forms of magic.

This one only applies to one specific NPC functioning on a completely different magic system.

 

[Skdursh]

Stats are there:

17 min 20 sec

Nice. Now I'm buying it.

 

[frajaq]

• Real-time combat

big yikes

 

[luj1]

Stylish game. I would play it for its visual identity alone.

 

[Urthor]

So, is it shit?

 

[Iron Balls McGinty]

I bought it.
Real time aside, and that was a tough one.

No time to play yet though.

 

[aratuk]

Steam-only. Meh.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

I was so excited looking at this. But its Real time, so fuck it.

 

[toro]

No streams on Twitch. Sign of quality game.

 

[Epsilon]

Just bought it and played through the tutorial area, kinda reminds me of Amberstar on the Amiga. But this basement is a fair bit larger! I'm really enjoying the atmosphere and the graphics. Didn't really about breaking the fourth wall during the introduction, it's generally not a good way to immerse the player. Maybe in Monkey Island where you're controlling Guybrush, but not in an RPG. Personal preference of course
So far, money well spent

It should also be noted that I'm playing it on Linux through proton/steam. It can crash on area transition. Thats just because of proton, the native version doesn't do it. Hit F5 for quicksave before going down/up stairs.

 

[Agame]

Yea the humor bothers me, I dont mind a bit eg. Fallout/Wasteland, but I am sick and tired of all the Indie "4th wall breaking, I am so meta" bullshit.

How bad is it in this?

 

[baud]

Yea the humor bothers me, I dont mind a bit eg. Fallout/Wasteland, but I am sick and tired of all the Indie "4th wall breaking, I am so meta" bullshit.

How bad is it in this?

Aeon Of Sands has the smartest opening

Apoc Epoch

John Walker

Senior Editor

14th November 2018 / 5:00PM

Apocalypse Day! But what worlds are here to greet us on Post-Apocalypse Day as we stagger, blinking, into the light?

I doubt it’s just me who finds it incredibly hard to take in the infodump that begins most games. I try! I read, “It was the final day of the third season of the Sharmani, so Reslator gathered his bag and made his way down the Triamblate Path…” and I’m already just staring at letters, not absorbing information. It’s just made up names in made up places doing made up things, and I’ve no chance whatsoever of retaining it, and worse, understanding it in context when the action begins.

Which makes the opening of post-apocalyptic blobber Aeon Of Sands, due out early next month, one of the most brilliant pieces of design I’ve seen in forever.



From the very beginning the game gives you choices over how you want to approach receiving information. You can be extremely mercenary at the start, responding to its extremely plain description of the opening scene by asking for a more poetic introduction, quick and dirty, or skip it altogether because you already know. Pick the first option and it dives head first into some splendidly flowery purple prose:

“As the first sun, the Giving Lord, leaves the embrace of the ever-changing hazes on the far horizon, only the gulfs of shadow cast by the sacred trees give some shelter from the heat to the people of the desert, and only the glass domes protect them from the colossal winds.”

To which the only available response is,

“OK, maybe too much ‘poetry’.”

The game carries on, saying,

“Yet, of late, on the branchways of Pantella, suspended on the tall arms of the Kinami tree and worming between its roots, a vague disquiet walks among the people, and wary eyes look suspiciously at the shadows.”

To which you respond, “Sketchy enough?” And yes, indeed, I’ve taken not a single word of it in. Yet it continues,

“At the dawn of the Harsh Master, the second sun, a sleepy clerk named Setrani is unceremoniously brought to the house of Cosimo Smith, the pragmatist of the Brown Leaves, the ruling council of the city.”

Which is why I was so bowled over with delight when it gave me these two options:

1. Second sun… Well, it’s always too early to meet the council.

2. Wait! Wait! Too much information there!

TWO! Oh my goodness, yes, two! I didn’t get a bit of it, forgot everyone’s names already, and remember something about a tree? Click it and it says “No worries,” and that it’ll back up a little. And then, in the plain English I so crave when starting out in a world I’ve yet to experience, it says:

“You play the role of Setrani, a city clerk.

His city is Pantella, an isolated city built upon a giant tree, Kinami.

All of this is covered by a giant glass dome.”

“Ok, but why?” you reply. And it continues, explaining clearly about the world, the tribes, the raiders, and how it’s so hot because of two suns. “So, don’t judge them if they have developed isolationism into an art.”

“1. Ok. Pantellans, Setrani, isolationism, check.”

Oh my goodness, I’ve taken it in.



As you play the game, this superb fourth-wall-breaking can continue! There are highlighted dialogue options that will demand the omnipotent narrator step in and explain terms you’re having thrown at you, or just suck them up and carry on. Right at the start there’s a great moment where you can ask about a couple of city names related to a quest you’re being sent on, and the game has to admit it doesn’t know because it’s a false errand, you’re never going to get there.

“But oh, whatever kind of city they might be, and wherever fate would toss them on a map, they would have been magnificent! With lots of side quests and adventures.”



But it also, with some protest, accepts that there are people who want to play dungeon crawlers for the action, and not the story, so insist enough that you just don’t want to read the text and it’ll say (just before teasing you with a “game over” screen),

“Yeah, who’d want a to know about all that crap about the story anyway, with all those turns and twists that a third-rate writer pored over for the better part of a year?”

You can reply,

“I’ll skip all the dialogues, laughin’ cruelly at him!”

or,

“Just give me the gist, will ya?”

Choose the former and it relents!

“Just pay some attention to the inventory icon on the worldmap while traveling: when it blinks, a dialogue has awarded you some item, lucky you!

It also suggests,

“You can still play the game without reading the dialogues, just skip them by clicking on random choices. The game will take you to some dungeon instead of other ones, but in the end it will make some sense.”

And incredibly, this is just one of the many different ways it’ll give you that information, depending upon if you relent at any stage to getting a bit of the story outlined in a couple of sentences, or a few more, or none whatsoever. I’ve never seen a game do any of this so eloquently, and so specifically, while maintaining a sense of humour about it.



It’s not often that the opening spiel of a game can inspire an entire feature, but Aeon of Sands’ completely took me by surprise. Despite restarting and restarting to write this, there are still avenues I’ve not explored for how it can introduce itself.

And while I certainly wouldn’t want every game opting for a Verfremdungseffekt approach to the matter, I’d really like to see ideas lifted from it for all sci-fi/fantasy games. Just an option to get a plain English rundown of all the flowery lore guff dump at the start would make such a difference. (Or, as I’ve previously argued, just reveal your story through the actual play, of course.)

Aeon Of Sands – The Trail is due out on the 4th December

 

[Hoaxmetal]

No wonder John Walker likes it.

 

[ceics]

For fuck's sake. Love some of the atmosphere oozing from the screenshots. Does it at least allow pause to issue orders?

How are you supposed to issue commands to all party members in real time, ffs? You click at the screen and they all fire what they have equipped?

 

[Tramboi]

For fuck's sake. Love some of the atmosphere oozing from the screenshots. Does it at least allow pause to issue orders?

How are you supposed to issue commands to all party members in real time, ffs? You click at the screen and they all fire what they have equipped?

You need to experience some Dungeon Master goodness !