Siveon
Bot
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Wow a new game requires something that was made in the last 10 years.TFW a retro blobber requires 64-bit OS and I can't play it.
Really jogs the noggins.
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Aeon of Sands: The Trail - Dungeon Crawling RPG love letter to the 90s!
- Thread starter neilsouth
- Start date
Really jogs the noggins.
- Joined
- Mar 22, 2013
- Messages
- 13,193
To me, this looks like Dark Sun: The Blobber, and to be honest that's all I need to know. Wasn't initially convinced of this, especially the UI seems to take up too much space on the screen (and wastes a lot of it), but otherwise it looks pretty good
naossano
Cipher
Looks better than i remembered.
Thank you agris! I think my partner offers here a better reply than what I could: https://crankgaming.blogspot.com/2013/01/aeon-of-sands-pyramid-scaling.html
However, in game, you can both change the window resolution (using integer resize) and - if you want - scale its content (using non-integer scaling) to fit the interactive area to your monitor!
A blobber + real time = I'll pass. Shame because I like the atmosphere and the graphics. But real time blobbers is just not my cup of tea. Unless this one is somehow different than your usual game of this sub-genre.
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John Walker likes the opening: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/20...e-day-aeon-of-sands-has-the-smartest-opening/
Aeon Of Sands has the smartest opening
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
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Background Character
Arbiter
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I like it
Life of the Party
Arcane
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The Desert and You
On the proper ways to address strangers in the desert.
One would assume that there were none, as in a desert, there should be nobody to address. But if you find yourself there, a desert ceases to be deserted, and it unmistakably follows that there should be an etiquette and a protocol to addressing strangers. Because everything goes so much smoother when you have protocols, right?
That is at least what Setrani, the main character in the story of “Aeon of Sands – The Trail” told himself when was ushered out of town and faced the desert for the first time.
Barely before he thought “Let me back in!” and at the same time of “There must be some kind of error!”
There was also the conflicting thought: “No please, I don’t want to die!”; but his habit of trying to be inconspicuous, which he acquired early in his life, won that friendly bid.
Whether the concept of less resistance path would serve him during the course of our story, that’s a matter for another day, but it will serve me now to describe the (probably not) happy encounters a traveler might have in this (really not) merry land.
So welcome to “Strangers in the Distance and You”.
You come from a domed city, a society clustered on the colossal body and limbs of a tree, all covered by a glass dome, sheltering people and vegetation from the brunt of the suns and the cruelty of the winds. You know that there are other cities like yours, by hearsay: you’ve never been to one and you personally know noone who has.
But even if they exist, your city is probably in a state of war with them too, as it is with the desert.
So, even if the chance is very little, those strangers you see there in the distance could be from another city, they could be every little bit as scared of the blinding emptiness around them as you are. Would they set aside their inbred hostility to foreigners, because of this common trait you have? You would, right?
Hah, like you could!
Well… Not easily anyway. Maybe you should listen to your empty belly, though, and let it dictate a protocol to barter some food, while letting them know you still are better than them. Is there a protocol for that?
Of course, they seem to be traveling in a group, while you are alone. However, your moral superiority must surely be evident, even to them!
But now that you are getting closer, you are not so sure that you should think of them as other citizens at all. Those bright colors and… plumes of some bird? They don’t look like proper and respectable townsfolk of a foreign, detested city at all.
Maybe… Are they nomads instead?
Could they be the bandits roaming freely through the desert, in slow migrations? Those who, from time to time, get closer to your town, in raiding parties, attacking the less guarded entrance, robbing what they can in the hovels and plazas nearest to it, taking things and people alike, scavenging for food and for slaves, before making a run for the sands?
Could those approaching be men so unafraid of this terrifying waste, that no badge of honor, true or made up, could sway them from the intention to kill you, capture you and eat you alive, and probably all of the three at the same time?
If they are nomads, you surely better start running. Not that you could outrun a bolt of lighting or the sand storms that a nomad warlock commands. But let’s just hope they have no warlock.
Ahhh… you are raving. It’s probably the heat. You are not used to its full violence.
In fact, let’s not be too hasty: the strangers don’t seem to quicken their pace. Actually, it seems like the distance between you and them has not decreased.
Is that possible at all? This damn creamy hot haze… Making it difficult to judge distances and appearances.
Your stomach closes further. What if they aren’t men at all?
What if they are some creatures just human looking, but not human at all? A bug, walking upright, a sand threader, something you have not seen before! Not that you have seen anything non human before, except the rotten and dried husks of some small animal sold at the markets in town, from the grim and outlandish people who dare travel the surroundings of their city, trapping, hunting.
But you never doubted that they existed, alive and skittering in the deep of the desert.
Therefore, these creatures must be certainly them, running in a frenzy, and getting close to you by the minute!
No… No. Bind your imagination! They cannot be that. Bugs exist. You could even encounter them if you are unlucky, but for sure they are not so calm and upright. All of this doubting is making you sick and feverish. “C’mon then! Come show me what you are made of, you will not have an easy feast of me!”
But then you are ashamed of your sudden outburst. They are still far, but not out of ear! All movement has stopped. They seem frozen in the haze. Precious sweat falls on your eyes and quickly evaporates.
What if they are the worst possible thing imaginable, something of magic and of savagery that you have no name for, not one that you would chance to utter.
Magic. You have magic, everybody has it, it’s common where you come from. It’s natural in this wrecked nature. The only thing that can keep what human life there is on the land.
Sure, your people work with their hands, they tend sheltered farms and manufacture the tools they use. They build their homes, they suspend the bridges between the limbs of the sacred Kinami tree. But to keep the tree alive, to bend its wood and the glass blown in the furnaces to create the dome that guards you… Magic! A natural magic.
But there is a different magic. One so perverted and dangerous that any practitioner would be killed on sight by anybody, from old man to children, in town and outside…
You never saw it, but you heard from one who knew, that a traveler once told him, to have a cousin who was sure to…
What if that ahead is a group of magicians, with their green plumes and brown masks?
What if… What if… You are trembling, feverishly.
That’s it! Surely their magic is already killing you! You try to find your balance, but you cannot but stumble on; wiping your brow from your copious sweat does nothing to help you see. But you are getting closer to them now, they are for sure luring you with a charm! They are getting larger and larger… Monsters! It’s the end! The end…
THUD!
“ARGH! Help! I’m killed! I’m killed!”
But the killing blow doesn’t come, as you wait for it, in a fetal position on the floor, eyes shut and covered from the sting of the evil magic.
“What are you waiting for? I will not beg! (Unless… Would I beg… Would it save my life? I’m an important person you know?)”
But still no answer comes, from cruel lips.
Slowly, you remove one hand from your eyes, and then the other, extending your arms slowly in the space between you and the unknown, your eyes still closed.
You touch a leg. Whoever he is, he’s toying with you. This is undignified!
Shaking, you inhale a lungful of hot air, so that you can face death at least a bit more calmly.
Then you open your eyes, to see the rarest creatures on the land. The brown mask stands there. Scaly and covered with green plumes.
You are looking at the green and brown face of a palm tree.
Darth Canoli
Arcane
A small window just to mimic old games (with a lot of unused space), that's plain stupid, they did it for technical reasons, not a single one of the pioneers devs would do it nowadays.
Real-time ...
Real-time ...
Real time combat dance is THE WORST! 
(if you don't see the gif below, try here.)
Add Aeon of Sands to your Steam wishlist here!
(if you don't see the gif below, try here.)
Add Aeon of Sands to your Steam wishlist here!
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Life of the Party
Arcane
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- 3,535
Life of the Party
Arcane
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Bladderfish
Augur
- Joined
- Apr 10, 2006
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- 127
Someone buy and review the bastard. I like the look of this.
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- Jan 28, 2011
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- 99,697
Last edited by a moderator:
V_K
Arcane
Did the former, can't guarantee the latter.
PrettyDeadman
Guest
I bought it.
Quick review:
]
I died quickly afterwards :
The game so far seems to be about walking in a dungeon while fighting rats.
Dungeon is hard to navigate without looking at the map (even walking a few steps).
V_K
Arcane
Weapons don't disappear, they break. Very, very fast. The devs apparently subscribe to the Event Horizon/Dreamforge school of weapon breaking, where all weapons were basically consumables with an indeterminate, but limited, number of charges.
It's a bit funny though how all off-hand items are classified as shields. Using a mushroom for a shield sounds rather kinky.
I'm currently on the third level of the "tutorial" dungeon. Already died once on easy. It is a love letter to the 90s it seems. Looks so far that Lands of Lore were the main inspiration, but let's see how dungeon design develops further.
It's a bit funny though how all off-hand items are classified as shields. Using a mushroom for a shield sounds rather kinky.
I'm currently on the third level of the "tutorial" dungeon. Already died once on easy. It is a love letter to the 90s it seems. Looks so far that Lands of Lore were the main inspiration, but let's see how dungeon design develops further.
V_K
Arcane
Magic system seems to be interesting but not sure how useful. I think they overdid the cost part without providing a lot of benefits: you have to use reagents, watch out for mana burn AND have a catalyst equipped. Doesn't work very well with RT combat, too many things to keep track of. And I'm not even mentioning that NPC whose magic works by completely different rules, making the whole thing even more cumbersome and overwhelming.
Loving the creativity that went into the levels though. There was, for example, a fun part though where you run a game on a terminal in a dungeon, and get transported into a wireframe level. If only this creativity would show in the puzzles as well - they seem to belong to LoL school so far in that they are all rather contained and straightforward. But I'll give it a few more dungeons to see if it improves.
So far, I'm getting a SitS vibe in a sense - a lot of interesting ideas that don't necessarily mix together too well, stretched out by filler content somewhat.
Loving the creativity that went into the levels though. There was, for example, a fun part though where you run a game on a terminal in a dungeon, and get transported into a wireframe level. If only this creativity would show in the puzzles as well - they seem to belong to LoL school so far in that they are all rather contained and straightforward. But I'll give it a few more dungeons to see if it improves.
So far, I'm getting a SitS vibe in a sense - a lot of interesting ideas that don't necessarily mix together too well, stretched out by filler content somewhat.
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