Game News Caves of Lore Released

[Infinitron]

Tags: Caves of Lore; Red Plume

We learned about the classics-inspired pixel art RPG Caves of Lore back in November, but the game has been in development for many years. Developer Michael Robins had to teach himself how to program and draw pixel art in order to create it. Despite this, the game was released today on schedule. Following requests from users on our forum, Mike even found the time to modify the engine to display the entire party on screen during exploration. You can see that and more in the game's launch trailer:

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Caves of Lore is available on Steam for a mere $10. A fine first RPG release for 2023.

 

[Fargus]

Nice. Gonna wishlist this shit.

 

[The_Sloth_Sleeps]

No demo though. Why no demo? Is there something to hide?

 

[Late Bloomer]

30+ quests, and 20+ areas to explore.

WOW!!!!!

 

[Curratum]

Surprised it's this reasonably priced, and looks so decent.

 

[mindx2]

Purchased!

 

[Tyranicon]

It's pretty good so far. A little buggy, but that's par for the course. This is right up codex's alley.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Did my civil duty

 

[Late Bloomer]

A little buggy

What bugs have you run into in your time playing so far?

 

[Tyranicon]

A little buggy

What bugs have you run into in your time playing so far?

Mostly annoyances (keyboard keys not working always, NPC dialogue glitching out, etc) but a serious sequence break did pop up, which I detailed on the main thread at https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...el-art-rpg-inspired-by-classics.145114/page-4.

 

[Whisper]

Impressions of game?

 

[ChaDargo]

Looked appealing at first, but a deeper look and it seems sloppy. Also the Steam reviews seem like bullshit to me. Not a ton of reviews but uh... all 5 positive ones received it for free. The negative review confirms the sloppy look of the game:

"I would avoid it for now. A lot of things are not explained. Things that are important, such as locking picking, identify, what abilities do.

It's very bugged - it tells you to not save your game after erroring on accepting a quest.. so what do you do.. just stop playing? Tutorials are very.. lack luster and tend to stay stuck on the screen w/explanations.

I had to restart 3 times because it would not choose the trait i wanted in the start, kept defaulting to "hand-to-hand"

This is NOT an EA release.

Seems like a fun game so far, but I didn't expect such a flawed product."

Someone claiming to be the developer (SirRender) responded promptly:

"Hey, sorry about your experience. Having a hundred new players is putting me to the test for sure. I am a solo dev, and you can be sure that every issue will be addressed. Definitely not an EA release, as you said."

Gotta wait and see I guess?

 

[Lady Error]

Looks very promising. I guess give him some time to iron out the bugs.
Hope that it is not too short either - 20 areas is not much, depending on how large they are.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I thought for a second SP was back.
Don't play with my heart like that.

 

[Tyranicon]

I'm not too far, about two hours in. My opinions.

Pros:

• Great music
• I like the art and animations, even if they are simple
• Each character has their own special skills to use on the map, they open up new dialogue with NPCs, etc
• The RPG basics are done very well for a first time solodev (better than me at any rate)
• The writing is competent enough
• A classic cave-exploring, party-based, turn-based RPG

Cons:

• Buggy. There's no way around it, there's a fair amount of bugs in here.
• Some weird design decisions, and the system is not explained well. Some mechanics are left vague.
• Way too easy. Are there any drawbacks to the resting system? Seems like you could just spam rests and you'd steamroll all the combat encounters.
• Some balancing issues, certain spells (like the rock drop that stuns enemies) are way too strong.
• Lots of typos

Right now I would say this is the type of game you buy to support the dev, but it holds a fair amount of promise. IMO, releasing into early access would've helped a lot.

 

[ChaDargo]

I'm not too far, about two hours in. My opinions.

Pros:

• Great music
• I like the art and animations, even if they are simple
• Each character has their own special skills to use on the map, they open up new dialogue with NPCs, etc
• The RPG basics are done very well for a first time solodev (better than me at any rate)
• The writing is competent enough
• A classic cave-exploring, party-based, turn-based RPG

Cons:

• Buggy. There's no way around it, there's a fair amount of bugs in here.
• Some weird design decisions, and the system is not explained well. Some mechanics are left vague.
• Way too easy. Are there any drawbacks to the resting system? Seems like you could just spam rests and you'd steamroll all the combat encounters.
• Some balancing issues, certain spells (like the rock drop that stuns enemies) are way too strong.
• Lots of typos

Right now I would say this is the type of game you buy to support the dev, but it holds a fair amount of promise. IMO, releasing into early access would've helped a lot.

It's really disappointing that it's not in early access. Seems like he won't be able to make it this way... I had just assumed it was a game in early access at first glance. Why is there not even a demo? It seems odd.

 

[Fargus]

Lmao wtf? My entire steam activity is spammed with updates to this game

 

[Falksi]

Shame, at £8.50 I was gonna take a punt on it, but bugs really do bug me, so I'll wait a while until they sort shit out.

The resting mechanic sounds annoying too. Either make it have a purpose, or just regenerate after combat to save faff.

 

[MrBuzzKill]

Looks pretty for sure (except for the logo - that is awful, unfortunately). There are visual elements that take you out of the retro vibe (such as the crisply polygonal trail VFX and the weird skewed dynamic shadows, imo they have no place here). Wishlisted, might end up buying.
Can anyone speak for the story? How interesting is it? how big are the lore dumps?

 

[Roguey]

Lmao wtf? My entire steam activity is spammed with updates to this game

This is almost Cleveian (true Cleveian patches would break the saves with every patch).

 

[mindx2]

Lmao wtf? My entire steam activity is spammed with updates to this game

This is almost Cleveian (true Cleveian patches would break the saves with every patch).

Just glad he's patching quickly and consistently.... should be able to play it by, what... 2024ish? Actually, I am glad he's patching/debugging.

 

[Curratum]

Five visible reviews on Steam, 4 of 5 are free copies. I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer...

 

[Late Bloomer]

Five visible reviews on Steam, 4 of 5 are free copies. I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer...

You can refund it. Just don't play over two hours. I have gotten 6 hours out of it so far. From the pacing of the game I suspect there is quite a bit more which will make it able to pass the one dollar for one hour of play minimum metric. The battles and exploration are fun. It's a solid effort and worth consideration from anyone here.

 

[Daemongar]

Five visible reviews on Steam, 4 of 5 are free copies. I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer...

I'm sure his family and friends are proud of the guy and doing their part. I'll cut him some slack. I'll pick it up when I have time to play something - around February 2nd - so maybe it will be nice and stable by then, but I've paid a lot more for games I've never launched - this looks pretty nice.

 

[Curratum]

I'm not saying they're all necessarily fake, just waiting for a bit more accumulation.