Preview Extravagant Frayed Knights Codex Preview Feature

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Tags: Frayed Knights; Jay Barnson; Rampant Games

<p>As most of you probably know, Indie developer <a href="http://rampantgames.com/frayedknights/" target="_blank">RampantGames</a> is about to release the first part of their blob dungeon crawler cRPG : <strong>Frayed Knights: The Skull of S'makh-Daon</strong>. What can I say, I've asked Jay Barnson to tag team a preview feature with me. It's half preview, half Let's Play and half interview.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Despite the fact you'll get this pre-generated characters as your party, you're free to level them up as you like. They cover the basic RPG archetypes and while you can pick skills and feats not fitting their predefined role, I think it's at least dubious to do so, in terms of combat efficiency. Although nothing stops you from trying anyways. Unlike other blob crawlers the game doesn't feature a phase-based combat system but a truely turnbased one with initiative-rolls before every turn to determine the sequence in which the combatants are going to act, something I prefer over phase-based.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Staying true to cRPG traditions we start out with pretty much zero resources. Expect a potion of Negligible Healing, 2 potions of Liquid Nap (per person) and some sort of weapon, for instance a Shoddy Quarterstaff, which is almost as good as a regular quarterstaff, except it's not. Additionally, Chloe comes with 3 charges on her wand of Incendiary Crackleball, a spell that does almost nothing, but it does it to multiple enemies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><a href="http://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=241" target="_blank">Read the whole thing here.</a></p>

 

[Metro]

First part? Is it episodic? I'll admit I skimmed over the parts where you gave the detailed combat play-by-play but I didn't seem to pick that up anywhere else in the piece.

 

[getter77]

3 episodes planned I believe.

 

[Gragt]

All in order to get more money and make a Taluntain class house.

 

[Excidium]

Speaking of Potions of Liquid Nap, those can increase your endurance and remove exhaustion which might come in handy because your biggest enemy early on, apart from pus golems, evil priests and cultists and brittlebone skeletons, seems to be your blue endurance bar. It's the same as a mana bar except it's called endurance here. You use it to cast spells and pull off your other combat abilities. Now the catch is, the game is not welcoming enough to just regenerate your endurance immediately after a fight. As far as I can tell it doesn't regenerate at all unless you press (R)est during a combat encounter. See, when in combat every action, like (A)ttacking, (C)asting a spell and so on requires a bit of endurance. When you rest instead for that turn you gain a small chunk of endurance back without immediately spending it on some combat action. That means I've found myself quite often casting "Invoke Snoring" (Sleep) on the last enemy and then resting my whole team for several turns while he was sleeping so they could get their blue bars filled up.

Ugh, I hate this kind of mechanic.

Other than that looks like a p. fun game.

 

[RampantCoyote]

Just a point of clarification - you can rest outside of combat too, and then it rests everyone back to full endurance (minus the exhaustion limiter). But it runs the chance of an encounter.

 

[Excidium]

That's reassuring.

It's pretty easy for stamina to become a hassle that just limits combat options (see Avadon) instead of a fun resource to manage but it looks like you got things covered.

 

[Lightknight]

Everything is supposed to be funny, names, item description, party banter.

Eeeh, no. Just no. Trashy "humor" turns me right off.

 

[Davaris]

I thought the item names were VOD and his usual lulz. I haven't seen a comedy RPG before, so now I am interested enough to try the demo.

 

[Shannow]

I prefer stamina to be a mostly in-combat resource (eg. JA or Wiz8). So I'm for regenerating stamina. Just sayin'.
Otherwise still waiting for the new demo

 

[VentilatorOfDoom]

Just a point of clarification - you can rest outside of combat too, and then it rests everyone back to full endurance (minus the exhaustion limiter). But it runs the chance of an encounter.

Ah cool. That means I don't have to save my endurance so desperately.

 

[villain of the story]

you can rest outside of combat too

That almost reads like a follow up to a "you can rest during combat".

 

[villain of the story]

Everything is supposed to be funny, names, item description, party banter.

Eeeh, no. Just no. Trashy "humor" turns me right off.

Shows us examples of this "trashy" and "non-trashy" humour, Litenite.

 

[Oriental European]

Ugh, i hope those are not the only portraits in the game...

That means I've found myself quite often casting "Invoke Snoring" (Sleep) on the last enemy and then resting my whole team for several turns while he was sleeping so they could get their blue bars filled up.

You tricky bastard... i like that

 

[Oriental European]

 

[coaster]

Looks interesting but humour is very hard to get right in games. Hope the plot/NPC interaction doesn't get too irritating because of this.

 

[Jaesun]

The sheer fact Jay Barnson did a codex exclusive review == BRO.

You have successfully added Jay Barnson to your BRO list.

 

[Monocause]

He should get a proper artist. While nothing in particular looks ugly, the portraits, the GUI, the text font, the rather sterile 3D environment - all this in a single bag makes for an exceedingly unpleasant package of aesthetics. Even Avernum 1-3 era Jeff Vogel games looked much better than this.

 

[quasimodo]

I don't know if the humor will add or subtract to the game, but I'll buy the game on day one for the TB combat.

 

[villain of the story]

Yeah, TB combat and unusual combat solutions will be my main reason.

 

[Excidium]

This is awesome.

The sheer fact Jay Barnson did a codex exclusive review == BRO.

You have successfully added Jay Barnson to your BRO list.

Indeed.

 

[Metro]

He should get a proper artist. While nothing in particular looks ugly, the portraits, the GUI, the text font, the rather sterile 3D environment - all this in a single bag makes for an exceedingly unpleasant package of aesthetics. Even Avernum 1-3 era Jeff Vogel games looked much better than this.

I actually like the 3D environments. I agree, though, that the GUI (more particularly the borders and such) could be a bit more polished. But it's certainly no game breaker.

 

[Mayday]

EDIT: now I'm confused.
How many artists does Rampant employ? Some of their old games look much better.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind trying my hand at improving the overall look.

 

[St. Toxic]

I don't know, this actually looks quite good. Gute job, guise.

 

[Davaris]

EDIT: now I'm confused.
How many artists does Rampant employ? Some of their old games look much better.
.

I don't think they are all his games. I assume Jay lists other people's games as well.

He should get a proper artist. While nothing in particular looks ugly, the portraits, the GUI, the text font, the rather sterile 3D environment - all this in a single bag makes for an exceedingly unpleasant package of aesthetics. Even Avernum 1-3 era Jeff Vogel games looked much better than this.

Proper artists are for people with lots of money.

Anyway I wouldn't obsess over the art. If you get the game play right, people will like the game. See Minecraft for an example of ugly, but people love it.