Game News Druidstone releasing on May 15th, now available for preorder

[Jaedar]

Grimrock did payoff. You are just retarded.

Afaik Grimrock 2 was considered something of a flop / made grimrock 3 a financially unviable prospect.

Which is a big shame, because it's better than the first game by a pretty large margin, and a theoretical third game would probably be really good.

 

[V_K]

Afaik Grimrock 2 was considered something of a flop

It's not like the numbers aren't out there. It sold ~400k copies compared to ~1mil of LoG1, but at a much higher price (24$ vs. 15$). So revenue-wise, it made about 60-65% of what LoG1 made. Which, while not a slam dunk, is still very far from a flop.
No, it's perfectly understandable that they wanted to take a creative break - there's only so much one can do to improve on the old formula.

 

[Jaedar]

Afaik Grimrock 2 was considered something of a flop

It's not like the numbers aren't out there. It sold ~400k copies compared to ~1mil of LoG1, but at a much higher price (24$ vs. 15$). So revenue-wise, it made about 60-65% of what LoG1 made. Which, while not a slam dunk, is still very far from a flop.
No, it's perfectly understandable that they wanted to take a creative break - there's only so much one can do to improve on the old formula.

Please take the second part of my or statement in this case.

Making a bigger and better game and losing 40% of your revenue is a good reason to not make another one.

 

[V_K]

Afaik Grimrock 2 was considered something of a flop

It's not like the numbers aren't out there. It sold ~400k copies compared to ~1mil of LoG1, but at a much higher price (24$ vs. 15$). So revenue-wise, it made about 60-65% of what LoG1 made. Which, while not a slam dunk, is still very far from a flop.
No, it's perfectly understandable that they wanted to take a creative break - there's only so much one can do to improve on the old formula.

Please take the second part of my or statement in this case.

Making a bigger and better game and losing 40% of your revenue is a good reason to not make another one.

You're thinking too black-and-white. While losing 40% revenue might seem drastic in relative numbers, it still sold pretty good, especially for a 4-man indie studio. I think the devs understood perfectly well that the first game's success was a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of deal and didn't expect to repeat it.
To put things into perspective, Expeditions series sold a much smaller amount both in absolute and relative numbers, yet the third game has been confirmed.

 

[Sinatar]

Afaik Grimrock 2 was considered something of a flop

It's not like the numbers aren't out there. It sold ~400k copies compared to ~1mil of LoG1, but at a much higher price (24$ vs. 15$). So revenue-wise, it made about 60-65% of what LoG1 made. Which, while not a slam dunk, is still very far from a flop.
No, it's perfectly understandable that they wanted to take a creative break - there's only so much one can do to improve on the old formula.

The majority of those 400k copies came from a humble bundle, they had sold less than 100k prior to that.

 

[toro]

Afaik Grimrock 2 was considered something of a flop

It's not like the numbers aren't out there. It sold ~400k copies compared to ~1mil of LoG1, but at a much higher price (24$ vs. 15$). So revenue-wise, it made about 60-65% of what LoG1 made. Which, while not a slam dunk, is still very far from a flop.
No, it's perfectly understandable that they wanted to take a creative break - there's only so much one can do to improve on the old formula.

Please take the second part of my or statement in this case.

Making a bigger and better game and losing 40% of your revenue is a good reason to not make another one.

Chill. They made enough money with LoG1 and LoG2. It's more like they wanted to take a creative break.

Also this game is not from Almost Human, it's made by a new studio ... which doesn't have the LoG pressure.

Druidstone is being developed by a newly-formed studio called Ctrl Alt Ninja, which actually shares a number of people from Grimrock developer Almost Human. (Grimrock designer and audio man Antti Tiihonen is also involved.) Co-founder Juho Salila said that after four years of nothing but Grimrock, the team needed a break, but when he and Petri Hakkinen "started to have that old familiar itch" to make a new game, the other Almost Human founders were wrapped up in other projects.

"To keep things simple, we decided to found a new company and started prototyping new game ideas. We made something like seven prototypes including one that we developed almost six months before abandoning it. In the end we settled with Druidstone and started working on it full steam," he said. "One other advantage of developing a game under different name is the freedom of fresh start. With a new company we don't have the pressure of making another Grimrock game and we had a lovely blank canvas in front of us."

TL;DR: LoG games did pretty well.

 

[Glop_dweller]

Which is a big shame, because [LoG2] it's better than the first game by a pretty large margin, and a theoretical third game would probably be really good.

I thought so —only— in terms of the improved scripting interface; not the actual game. The scripting interface was by far superior, but had the caveat that novice scriptors who had learned a bit of LoG1 scripting, were often totally flummoxed by the new component model of the scripting interface... one that inherently broke the way everything used to work; and so was not backwards compatible with LoG1 scripts.

As far as the actual game goes, I preferred the first one over the second.

Was this the [Druidstone] game that was originally announced as procedurally generated?

It was, but they had to scrap that idea.

 

[Metro]

Looks like solid bundle fodder to me.

 

[Iskramor]

Druidstone legend of the showelware forest.

 

[luj1]

Druidstone legend of the showelware forest.

 

[Iskramor]

Druidstone legend of the showelware forest.

Im against contrarian edgelording and shitposting but i know catastrophe when i see one.

 

[luj1]

Infinicuck

Spoiler

 

[DemonKing]

Will take one for the team and preorder so I can provide some impressions here.

Let's hope the puzzles aren't as a esoteric as some of the Grimrock ones this time round!

 

[xmd1997]

No campaign/story, just random missions?

No, there's a story with a party of companions. It might be similar to Blackguards.

Someone asked a similar question on their steam forums, this is what the dev had to say.

"Hi! Druidstone is a tactical RPG with handcrafted missions and deeply tactical combat. The missions are connected non-linearly on a world map and you can developed your characters and buy new stuff between the missions. I'm not sure if there's anything exactly like Druidstone out there, so we try to avoid comparing it to other games, but if you think of a mix of XCOM, Final Fantasy Tactics and board and card games in general you are not too far off I think."
https://steamcommunity.com/app/954650/discussions/0/1846946102844645311/

I'll get the game if it reviews well. It now has my interest.

 

[Grunker]

The most important part of Blackguards being so fantastic is the handcrafted feel of almost every single encounter, though. So we'll have to see what "handcrafted missions" really means.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Grimrock pedigree keeps me in the YES team so far

 

[Mortmal]

Druidstone legend of the showelware forest.

Im against contrarian edgelording and shitposting but i know catastrophe when i see one.

Is it the generic world of Warcraft art style, the kind of puzzles we solved an hundred time before or maybe the mainstream abilities point buy system that makes you think that ?