Game News Cyclopean is an upcoming Lovecraftian dungeon crawler from the creator of Islands of the Caliph

[Infinitron]

Tags: Cyclopean (Schmidt Workshops); Schmidt Workshops

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2958790/Cyclopean/

Trapped in the Vaults of Zinn!
You are Randolph Carter, old dreamer and friend of cats. The spiteful and mischievous zoogs, after making an unholy alliance with the ghasts, have imprisoned you and several cats in the haunted, cyclopean Vaults of Zinn. You must find the exit of the vaults and rescue as many cats as you can, or die trying.

Rogue-Like Dungeon Crawler
The game is a grid based dungeon crawler, with a procedurally generated dungeon and rogue-like gameplay. Each play-through is unique, with perma-death, and a summary of your play-through will be presented at the end. The game currently stores your top 10 play-throughs for review.

Turn Based Combat
The gameplay and combat is all turn based, allowing you to make strategic decisions.

Upgrades
The current build of the game has a simple upgrade system. You can gain levels by fighting monsters and thereby gain "life" and "skill". Life is just health (but it fits into the UI better) and skill effects your ability to hit enemies.

You can also find swords which increase your damage and shields which increase your defense. This feature was very much a product of the limited time of the game jam, and I will be thinking about ways to enhance it.

New Features
I am considering some new features to add to the full release. Among them are a larger dungeon, more monsters, better upgrading system and having the cats join your party in some way. I do hope to do this without diminishing the simplicity and ease of access that the current version has.​

 

[Maxie]

after his wonderful first game he sets off to contribute to the antihuman Lovecraft slop. amazing decline

 

[Luka-boy]

and having the cats join your party in some way

Even H. P. Lovecraft's Cat too?

 

[Kruyurk]

and having the cats join your party in some way

Even H. P. Lovecraft's Cat too?

I didn't know Lovecraft had a cat. Is he like the cats in Dwarf Fortress, licking alcohol from the floor?

 

[Hellion]

GOTY confirmed.

 

[Kruyurk]

GOTY confirmed.

You can indeed have various cats following you in PoE, including a zombie cat.

 

[Victor Pflug]

I once worked on a game called Cyclopean too - a long time ago - with a guy that I think works with Iron Tower.

Small world.

 

[luj1]

cool aethetic but this seems narrow in scope

how is combat, class diversity and build variety?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Its from a game jam so I'm guessing nil. Such things are generally barebones with a single gimmick, and this one's gimmick is clearly the aesthetic. Still, some of these things do go on to become interesting later on after many updates.

 

[luj1]

yea i agree

its a shame all we have nowadays are small artsy gimmicks like this and Hibernaculum

 

[Gahbreeil]

Was this game developed on a Pip-Boy?

 

[H. P. Lovecraft's Cat]

That might be the worst aesthetic I've ever seen. Looks like viewing a game through shitty nightvision goggles. Somebody tell the dev to stop before it's too late.

 

[Tweed]

Ditch the shitty green filter and redo it all in green ASCII instead.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

 

[Jermu]

Turn Based Combat

procedurally generated dungeon

 

[Contagium]

I didn't care for Islands of the Caliph at all, with PRAISE ISLAM constantly screamed by the NPC's, along with the boring combat and exploration. And now another Lovecraft tale...yawn

 

[udm]

Damn I thought this was going to be the other Cyclopean game that Vic talked about

 

[The Brazilian Slaughter]

Damn I thought this was going to be the other Cyclopean game that Vic talked about

Same tbh

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

This game looks awful.

 

[almondblight]

Does anyone remember the dialogue demo for Iron Tower's/Scott's Cyclopean? It was pretty cool, even a simplified game built like that would have been better than most of the stuff out there. Scott - apparently Scott Hamm - ended up doing work on a bunch of other games at least, and seems to be still active as a freelance RPG writer going by his LinkedIn profile.

 

[Snufkin]

Imagine playing game for hours with those graphics.

 

[Darth Roxor]

The monochrome is probably there to hide that this recycles most of the assets from Islands.

 

[thesheeep]

Video compression cannot deal with graphics like that.

This game would be a complete nightmare to stream, watch videos of, etc.
Obviously of no impact for playing, but if the dev wants to spread the word the way that words are spread nowadays, this art style is an absolute hindrance.

 

[Oberon]

and having the cats join your party in some way

Even H. P. Lovecraft's Cat too?

wtf based I didn't catch that right away

 

[Arvennios]

I thought the Islands of the Caliph looked somewhat decent, so why the awful 2-color palette graphics from the late 70's ? God, what an eyesore, it's so bad it could permanently damage your vision.