Indie Lair Of The Leviathan - old school turn-based RPG based on classics such as Baldurs Gate 1 and 2, Phantasie, Ultima and the SSI Goldbox games.

[MerchantKing]

Are there any Gnomes?

 

[Mortmal]

Hey guys! I'm Oliver Joyce from Whiskeybarrel Studios - I'm the co-developer of Lair of the Leviathan. Really cool to see a current thread talking about the game, I only just discovered it.

I wanted to clear up a few things about the project. Firstly, it's definitely not a JRPG, though the early imagery might make you think it is. The gameplay videos you see are from David's early prototype (made in Construct) and there's been lots of iterations. The version I'm working on now is in an entirely different engine entirely ( Godot ), and none of that is reflected in the trailers yet. David faked some of the combat with animations for illustrative purposes, and there's some placeholder art still there.

The plan is to get a demo up sometime next year and release the full game in three years. No early access, just the game, all its content. We'd like to use feedback from the demo in conjunction with private beta tests and so on, to get feedback, rather than keeping the game in Early Access for years and years. Now I know there are some developers out there who promise the world and miss their deadlines by years and years and years , but I do have a proven track record. I have 10 games on Steam right now, at the rate of roughly one a year - and I have a family to feed, so I'm good at shipping games, rest assured!

Neither David or I are massive fans of JRPGs and their endless dialog - though there'll be conversations amongst party members and NPCs etc, we want to keep it brief and let players get on with things without a hundred clicks. You'll be able to create a party of your own custom heroes or have up to 4 premade heroes join you along the way.

The main thing I wanted to clear up was that combat will be pretty close to Gold Box - like what you see in Pools of Radiance, except I am thinking of moving it to a hex grid for more strategic variety. Heroes can move around the grid, they won't just tween to the enemy, hit and tween back - this will definitely not be JPRG combat! Movement, area of effect spells, positioning, all that stuff will matter. I loved Gold box growing up and I'm yet to really see a game that recaptures that, so that's kind of what we're aiming for - except the plan is to remove the 3D maps because they were confusing as hell. We're electing to go top down for the overworld and exteriors, with a bit of debate right now around top down v side on for interiors.

I think there's been a bit of confusion around the Baldur's Gate claims. I get where David is coming from, he wants to recreate Baldur's Gate 2's more open world nature, in that you can go to a bunch of different maps at any time and its not so linear, and of course having a bunch of interesting party members with their own personalities and dialogues etc. That is *probably* where the Baldur's Gate comparisons end because clearly you can see the game doesn't really resemble BG at all. Perhaps if it had been made in the 90s, though even gameplay wise we're focusing more on exploration and combat rather than deep branching dialogue and thousands of items to pick up and interact with.

So, I've been on the project since roughly August. David (from Nostalgic Realms) was working on it solo for the best part of a year before I joined the project. The whole thing came about when I saw him posting about the game on Reddit and I was really taken with the art style and his vision to make a game in the style of the 90s era RPGs. I've been making small games for a few decades, I'm best known for a gladiator game series called Swords and Sandals which blew up in the Flash era. I still make sequels and spinoffs today - they've got enough of a following that I'm able to do this fulltime as an indie dev.

Anyway, David and I got talking - turns out he followed me on Twitter and was a fan of my games. We have a lot in common, we're both Australian , though David lives in Japan. We both have 2 kids 6 and under, both in our 40s, both huge fans of the 90s RPGs - he's even well versed on the obscure flawed classic Knights of Legend. David is a really skilled pixel artist but this is his first game, and as we talked we realised the scope of what he wanted to achieve was possibly beyond his experience and skill level as a coder. I'd been toying with the idea of building a big RPG for many years, and with my last game S&S Immortals selling pretty well, now was the time. I offered to come on board as co-designer and programmer of the game, so David could focus on the art, aesthetic and world of the game itself. A month of chatting and working out ideas, turns out we're on the same page about the game we want to make, so we elected to team up and forge this thing together!

I'm five months into the project right now ( coding the game using Godot 4 , which I'm really comfortable using ) and most of this time has been spent building a robust in-game editor inside the game itself so we can both work on the game simultaneously without a need for David to dive into the code. I've got a fully working character creator, encounter, dialogue, map editor, pathfinding and so on. Currently I'm just starting on the Item creator and then I'll turn my hand to combat. The editor is a lot of work, but I've talked a few times with my friend Anders Laurissen (of Skald fame) and his biggest takeaway from the 5 years of building Skald was to take your time on building solid in-game editor tools. Anders was a few years into Skald before he realised he needed to improve the toolset, and once he did, his productivity exploded. So, taking a cue from that, all my efforts now are in building the game engine and the editor for at least the next three months or more.

Nothing's been done on the plot, story, characters or anything like that but David has done a ton of spritework , many monsters, character archetypes , exterior and exterior locations and so on, so once the tools are in place we'll be able to start putting together a demo. The plan for this is to have it out some time in 2025. It'll just be a small vertical slice of the game, perhaps half an hour of gameplay to give you a taste of the rest of the game.

Going forward, I'll aim to post here regularly with updates and I'll try to be available to answer any questions you have on the development of the game - fire away and once again, thanks for interest in Lair!

Cheers, Oli

The art style does the job, and I guess it could end up looking like a Goldbox game in the end, even if the trailers are more misleading than anything else based on what you're telling us. However, all I see right now is more about appearance than substance. I had a look at your character creator video, and from the character stats, it looks like AD&D. But since WotC is stingy with licenses and it's extremely unlikely you'll get one, what ruleset will you be using? Some free retro clone, BX, Knave, OSE, or something similar?

 

[rojay]

Cheers, Oli

But since WotC is stingy with licenses and it's extremely unlikely you'll get one, what ruleset will you be using? Some free retro clone, BX, Knave, OSE, or something similar?

They shouldn't need a license unless they're using things that are unique to D&D; characters like Elminster or Drizzt, or monsters that first appeared in D&D like the beholder. The rules themselves, including the stats, are likely not a problem as long as you don't just copy & paste from the DM's guide or something. That's my memory when I did a little research during the whole open license fiasco, could be mistaken.

 

[Whiskeybarrel]

Cheers, Oli

But since WotC is stingy with licenses and it's extremely unlikely you'll get one, what ruleset will you be using? Some free retro clone, BX, Knave, OSE, or something similar?

They shouldn't need a license unless they're using things that are unique to D&D; characters like Elminster or Drizzt, or monsters that first appeared in D&D like the beholder. The rules themselves, including the stats, are likely not a problem as long as you don't just copy & paste from the DM's guide or something. That's my memory when I did a little research during the whole open license fiasco, could be mistaken.

Great question! Right now the plan is to loosely adapt the OGL Pathfinder license and just take the bits we like. World / lore-wise we're doing our own thing, though you'll prob find a lot of the usual tropes of goblins/ skeleton warriors and so on, with a few unique monster types too. The idea, settings-wise is to make it feel 'familiar' to classic D&D style gamers as a world, instead of something completely alien like a Morrowind or a Dark Sun. Because this is a pretty nostalgic game , I think we really want to get back to what we enjoyed as kids, the worlds of Dragonlance, Ultima, that kind of thing. Somewhere between low-high fantasy. Many people says Tolkeinesque settings are completely played out but for the purposes of the story we want to tell, I think this is where we want to take it.

 

[Mortmal]

Cheers, Oli

But since WotC is stingy with licenses and it's extremely unlikely you'll get one, what ruleset will you be using? Some free retro clone, BX, Knave, OSE, or something similar?

They shouldn't need a license unless they're using things that are unique to D&D; characters like Elminster or Drizzt, or monsters that first appeared in D&D like the beholder. The rules themselves, including the stats, are likely not a problem as long as you don't just copy & paste from the DM's guide or something. That's my memory when I did a little research during the whole open license fiasco, could be mistaken.

Great question! Right now the plan is to loosely adapt the OGL Pathfinder license and just take the bits we like. World / lore-wise we're doing our own thing, though you'll prob find a lot of the usual tropes of goblins/ skeleton warriors and so on, with a few unique monster types too. The idea, settings-wise is to make it feel 'familiar' to classic D&D style gamers as a world, instead of something completely alien like a Morrowind or a Dark Sun. Because this is a pretty nostalgic game , I think we really want to get back to what we enjoyed as kids, the worlds of Dragonlance, Ultima, that kind of thing. Somewhere between low-high fantasy. Many people says Tolkeinesque settings are completely played out but for the purposes of the story we want to tell, I think this is where we want to take it.

It's a good thing you chose a well-known and widely used system rather than trying to reinvent the wheel with a new system while assuming you're a genius and others are beneath you, as happened with Pillars of Eternity. Pathfinder (1e?) gets the job done, but I think you'd have an easier time using a spin-off of AD&D. Not only is it closer to the originals, but it also avoids the need to code hundreds of feats. Most of the time, people end up using the same optimal builds anyway, ignoring the majority of those options.

Don’t be afraid to use a Tolkienesque setting. When done well and written thoughtfully, it’s far better than the modern slog. Look at WotC's Dragonlance for 5e—they didn’t hire Weis and Hickman, and the result was a disgrace. Critics claim their style is dated and old-school, but when Grandma Weiss publishes a book, it instantly sells millions of copies. It’s clear that many people don’t think those settings or views are outdated—it’s just the perspective of the mainstream media and "reviewers" paid for propaganda, living in their bubble, which most often doesn’t reflect the actual player base.

 

[Whiskeybarrel]

Cheers, Oli

But since WotC is stingy with licenses and it's extremely unlikely you'll get one, what ruleset will you be using? Some free retro clone, BX, Knave, OSE, or something similar?

They shouldn't need a license unless they're using things that are unique to D&D; characters like Elminster or Drizzt, or monsters that first appeared in D&D like the beholder. The rules themselves, including the stats, are likely not a problem as long as you don't just copy & paste from the DM's guide or something. That's my memory when I did a little research during the whole open license fiasco, could be mistaken.

Great question! Right now the plan is to loosely adapt the OGL Pathfinder license and just take the bits we like. World / lore-wise we're doing our own thing, though you'll prob find a lot of the usual tropes of goblins/ skeleton warriors and so on, with a few unique monster types too. The idea, settings-wise is to make it feel 'familiar' to classic D&D style gamers as a world, instead of something completely alien like a Morrowind or a Dark Sun. Because this is a pretty nostalgic game , I think we really want to get back to what we enjoyed as kids, the worlds of Dragonlance, Ultima, that kind of thing. Somewhere between low-high fantasy. Many people says Tolkeinesque settings are completely played out but for the purposes of the story we want to tell, I think this is where we want to take it.

It's a good thing you chose a well-known and widely used system rather than trying to reinvent the wheel with a new system while assuming you're a genius and others are beneath you, as happened with Pillars of Eternity. Pathfinder (1e?) gets the job done, but I think you'd have an easier time using a spin-off of AD&D. Not only is it closer to the originals, but it also avoids the need to code hundreds of feats. Most of the time, people end up using the same optimal builds anyway, ignoring the majority of those options.

Don’t be afraid to use a Tolkienesque setting. When done well and written thoughtfully, it’s far better than the modern slog. Look at WotC's Dragonlance for 5e—they didn’t hire Weis and Hickman, and the result was a disgrace. Critics claim their style is dated and old-school, but when Grandma Weiss publishes a book, it instantly sells millions of copies. It’s clear that many people don’t think those settings or views are outdated—it’s just the perspective of the mainstream media and "reviewers" paid for propaganda, living in their bubble, which most often doesn’t reflect the actual player base.

The convoluted and unfamiliar systems for combat were my biggest disappointment with Pillars of Eternity! I was so excited about it for years after backing it on Kickstarter, everything about it resembled a Baldur's Gate spiritual sequel - but it was just so counter-intuitive (mages use strength now!) etc. I've also learned a lot from making my own systems in the Swords and Sandals series, it can be really tricky to balance stuff.

We chose Pathfinder just because its (on the surface) relatively similar to D&D , easy enough at a glance to get the hang of - but there's a ton of stuff from it we're just going to ignore and not adapt at all. I'm just building an item creator now and working out what to keep, what to throw out etc. Actually quite a fun task, despite being mainly shuffling data round. There will be a fair few 'feats' (I'm calling them powers for now as feats just sounds odd to me) but you're right, people will often just go for the same optimal builds most of the time - hell, that's what I did all through BG3, rolled up a plain human fighter and brute forced my way through the game with a two handed sword and simple attacks.

You're totally right about the game setting. Dragonlance's Autumn Twilight was the first fantasy book I read as a kid (even before LOTR!) and had a huge impact on me. That's the kind of setting we're going for, archetypal fantasy without a ton of weird races and spell systems etc. Barbarians look like conan, mages cast fireballs, dwarves are always grumpy, that kind of thing :D

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Pink Eye]

I'm best known for a gladiator game series called Swords and Sandals which blew up in the Flash era.

Hey! I know that game! My friends and I used to play the heck out of it during school! That's quite the title to drop! During the Flash era, it was one of *the* games that people talked about during school.

We chose Pathfinder just because its (on the surface) relatively similar to D&D , easy enough at a glance to get the hang of - but there's a ton of stuff from it we're just going to ignore and not adapt at all.

That's a good approach. The Pathfinder ruleset can get very bloated, so it'll be interesting to see what you take away from it. Regardless, I'm keenly excited in following your game's progress so good luck, also welcome to the Codex!

 

[Whiskeybarrel]

I'm best known for a gladiator game series called Swords and Sandals which blew up in the Flash era.

Hey! I know that game! My friends and I used to play the heck out of it during school! That's quite the title to drop! During the Flash era, it was one of *the* games that people talked about during school.

We chose Pathfinder just because its (on the surface) relatively similar to D&D , easy enough at a glance to get the hang of - but there's a ton of stuff from it we're just going to ignore and not adapt at all.

That's a good approach. The Pathfinder ruleset can get very bloated, so it'll be interesting to see what you take away from it. Regardless, I'm keenly excited in following your game's progress so good luck, also welcome to the Codex!

Hey, cheers Pink Eye! It's great to be here. I'm losing hours just trawling through the various threads on all the obscure games of my childhood, finding info and opinions on them you would never see on Reddit. Total treasure trove.

Yeah man, Pathfinder has so much 'role playing' bloat that I always wonder who uses. I mean, in a real campaign, who is calculating encumbrance to such detail, for example. For the purposes of Lair of the Leviathan, I'm trying to pick and choose bits and pieces that will best translate to hex-grid based combat ( which funny enough, 4th Edition D&D seems to do best!) . The lions share of stuff will be thrown out, in essence this is kind of a Pathfinder that more closely resembles the simplicity of original D&D where possible - except for the extra combat feats and cool tactical things you might want to do. Outside of combat, it'll be fairly simple, walk around, talk to people, pick locks, disarm traps, search for stuff, discover locations in the world etc.

Haha, you mention Swords and Sandals - it's funny, I built that in my early 20s (some 2 decades ago!!) and I was working for a company at the time, so the game never came out under my name. Because this was in the 'earlier' days of the internet, I just had no idea how big the game actually was. There was rudimentary data tracking in terms of you could tell roughly how many plays the games were getting, but no forums, not much in the way of fan feedback, YouTube was in its infancy. It's only now, many years later, that people get in touch with me to tell me how much they enjoyed the series ( and how much time was wasted in school thanks to it - that I take as a great badge of honour! )

 

[Ontopoly]

I always felt that pathfinder needed to remove the 1 minute per level spells. Keep the longer interesting buffs that encourage preparation like resistance/protection to elements, keep the shorter buffs used during combat like haste. Remove the boring buffs that just add incremental numbers to AC or attack.

 

[Whiskeybarrel]

For those interested in the game's progress thus far - I put together an 'end of year wrap' for the game on Steam, just detailing what we've done so far and what's to come ( demo will drop some time mid-late next year!)

Lair of the Leviathan 2024 Wrap

Merry Xmas and happy holidays to you and yours!

 

[rojay]

I think the game editor/engine is realistically 6 months from being in a playable state, then we'll spend maybe 3 months or so using all these tools to put together a nice polished demo sometime in late 2024.

That's from the 2024 wrap you linked. You meant the demo would be late 2025, right?

Either way, added the game to my wish list. Looks promising.

 

[Whiskeybarrel]

I think the game editor/engine is realistically 6 months from being in a playable state, then we'll spend maybe 3 months or so using all these tools to put together a nice polished demo sometime in late 2024.

That's from the 2024 wrap you linked. You meant the demo would be late 2025, right?

Either way, added the game to my wish list. Looks promising.

Oh, well spotted! You're totally right - 2025. All fixed!

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[cyborgboy95]

Character creation - the visuals
Work over the past few months has been ongoing on a variety of systems we need for this years demo and one that is almost done is the visual part of character creation.

When I first started working on Lair of the Leviathan I had originally planned for a main character with limited customisation and a party of premade npcs. Working solo I was really careful about overscoping and I felt that this system would be something easily achievable by myself.

After teaming up with Oliver things however have changed. Oliver and I grew up playing the SSI DnD Goldbox games and being able to customise the way your party looked was a huge part of those games. I remember spending literally hours trying to get everyone looking exactly the way I wanted before even starting each of them. I guess most readers aren't old enough to remember those games but at the time they were groundbreaking, having open worlds and tactical turn based combat that up until then I hadn't experience before.

Bikini Chainmail - always a classic


A big part of those games was also the ability to customise your party. You could choose from various body parts and colours for your battle sprites and in the first game, Pool of Radiance, they even had character portraits. Recently Oliver and I had been discussing character creation and and we were thinking, if we are really going to try to be a 'Goldbox' inspired game, why don't we just go all in on customisation? So we are now at the point where we are trying to maximise the visual options for players as much as we can, allowing them to try and visually create exactly the party they want.

As it stands, for our own system your combat sprites you will be able to choose from a variety of animation archtypes such as 1handed fighter, 2 handed magic user, etc and then further customise that sprites appearance, choosing from their weapon, armour set, hairstyles, etc. As you go through the game more weapons and armour sets will also be unlocked giving people something to 'collect' for people who like that kind of stuff and give party member that sense of growing in power.

We also discussed whether we want to lock appearances to gear but we decided in classic Goldbox style you can change each characters appearance at any time to whatever you want.

Keep in mind, the ui is for testing and we will most likely have drop down menus to make it easier to just choose the parts you want.

These are some of the combat sprites I was able to come up with playing around with the parts we currently have.

Furthermore in a nod to Pool of Radiance we are also creating portraits that you will be able to customise. There should be a fair variety of different parts such as eyebrows, beards, hairstyles to play around with once we get to the demo and this will further expand as we get closer to release. The portraits will be the main representation of your characters outside of battle on the world screen too.

Excuse the lack of body types for now. There will be way more available by the time the demo is ready.

We feel this will (hopefully!) give players enough options to represent their parties and make adventuring in the world a lot more personalised and fun.

 

[Dorateen]

Just checked in about the new customization options and Gold Box references. So is it full party creation now, or still picking from pre-made characters?

 

[Whiskeybarrel]

Just checked in about the new customization options and Gold Box references. So is it full party creation now, or still picking from pre-made characters?

David and I thought about this a bit and went backward and forward on it, so we figured the best thing to do was to offer both options.

There will be pre-made companions to be found throughout the realm ( an old wizard you find in a cave, for example ) and you'll also have the option to recruit your own pre-made heroes to the party via the tavern. The only thing you'll miss out is a bit of extra banter between heroes ( this is fairly minimal, there won't be copious volumes of text in this game ).

 

[Whiskeybarrel]

Hey adventurers!

I figured it's long overdue to do another update post here at the Codex. I know it's February already but my dev year is only truly starting 'for real' this week as I've been looking after my kids the last 7 weeks or so ( school holidays in Australia was an eternity this year!)

I did manage to get a bit of work in on Lair of the Leviathan during the break, mainly at night the way I used to before I was fulltime indie, and of course David from Nostalgic Realms has been powering away at the art too. David's done a full update over on the official Steam Forum here, so I won't repeat what he's been up to (but go check it out for some figurine / portrait updates!). My tasks over the break were indeed a lot less glamourous, but important!

With the item creator built, I turned my hand to the inventory system and the task of adding in a ton of items into the game. I've been using the Pathfinder 2E rulebook as a guide for what weapons / armour to add, but it's pretty easy to branch out from this as we go on. One thing I wanted to add (that doesn't appear in Pathfinder as far as I know ) is having in helmets/boots/ gauntlets as part of the armour set . In pathfinder it's just assumed that they are part of the complete armour set, but I like the idea of being able to have specific slots for hands/head/boots and so on.

We're loosely following Pathfinder but it's definitely way more complex than we need for the purpose of the game, so I'm definitely streamlining and simplifying things that make sense and scrapping other things that don't. This of course will be an iterative process and we definitely want to include player feedback in this.

Anyway, I've created about 70 items so far, will knock off a bunch of potions and gear such as lockpicks, compasses, ration kits etc today. See below for the Item creator main screen:

Next up for me this week is to code up how to equip/unequip these items on players. Because we're offering both mouse and keyboard support (and gamepad for a future console port hopefully!) , I have to be a bit clever in how items get selected, information is shown and so on. It's mostly working, but there's few more days on this I think.

After the inventory stuff is sorted, I'll go through and create some basic 'powers' - everything from simple walking, jumping and resting right through to fireball spells and backstabbing. These are essentially all the building blocks I need to be able to start working on the actual combat screen , which of course is at the heart of the game. At the moment I'm expecting to build this as a hex grid, though that may change to a simple cardinal direction square grid (ala Gold Box) if it proves too complex.

Anyway, that's it from me for today - expect many more frequent updates going forward now that the forge is fired up for 2025 !

Cheers, Oli