Mystic Land: The Search for Maphaldo - Old school RPG inspired by W7 and EoB

[Covenant]

If it is an item/key that helps you get to secret rooms/places, please do not make it possible to **** over by dropping/selling it. Do a key ring or something similar.

How about (for example) a normal item - let's say a weapon, though rare (only one to be found in the game) that is a completely normal weapon used by your fighter in battle, with all the normal characteristics, but can also be used a "special" way to solve a side-quest puzzle (not needed to finish the game)?
The dilemma is that if we don't allow drop/sell of such item, it will be pretty obvious what item can be used in a quest puzzle by going through all items and trying to "drop" them (you CAN pick up what you dropped for some time).

Legend of Grimrock 2 (or the best mods for it, at least) hit a nice balance with this by letting you screw yourself over if you wanted to sell/destroy things that might be needed later, but generally there was likely to be a version of it nearby - e.g. if your puzzle room requires a shuriken to open, some chest on the far side of the map will include a shuriken (along with a bunch of other loot).

Helps prevent a lot of cases of you realising you made your fatal mistake ten hours ago and are only discovering it now.

 

[Cleveland Mark Blakemore]

People claiming this style is niche (when it is implemented at this level of polish) remind me of the people who told Ari Arad that there was just no market for comic book movies and that the studio had agreed even Spiderman One with Toby McGuire would be lucky to clear a 100 million in profit if that.

Apparently Ari told them at that meeting that (he clearly had his finger on the real pulse of the marketplace) that Spiderman alone would easily bring in a billion dollars or more in profit. Even Stan Lee balked at that figure. Not even Stan thought that comic book properties were going to be worth much nowadays.

X-MEN was released in 2000 before and the sort of muted response of the market was pretty predictable given the director was so gay he didn't even use the original costumes and dressed them all up in bondage gear.

When Sam Raimi showed he truly understood the comic book and made the first Spiderman movie, the hysteria that resulted of the fans finally getting to see an actual comic book movie made liars out of everybody in Hollywood. Of course the potential market was colossal beyond belief if you knew what you were doing and did not put a known sodomite in as a director who admitted he actually never read the X-MEN comic book.

I believe it is the same way with blobbers. It only awaits the correct delivery and presentation to bring them back in force and sell a million copies.

Looking at the trailer just now I was thinking this is going to get such buzz before it releases it might sell huge amounts on day one.

 

[:Flash:]

Mystic Lands: The Search for Maphaldo

That does sound better in English.

I'd go further and suggest that that sounds significantly better, to me at least.

Well, Mystic Land (without s) will stay - as the land (the map if you will) itself is called that - The Mystic Land
But I'll suggest to others that we add "The" into the subtitle.

I'm not an English native speaker myself, but in that case, shouldn't it be "The Mystic Land"? Just as you yourself used the definite article twice with "land" in the first sentence.
Just putting it out there for native speakers to comment on, this could also be my pedantry / me being wrong.

Anyway, looks great! Will purchase if it comes out on GOG (don't have a steam account).

 

[Abu Antar]

Blobbers will never be mainstream, if not done by a big company, and it popularizes the genre.

 

[vitellus]

i remain cautiously optimistic.

Blobbers will never be mainstream, if not done by a big company, and it popularizes the genre.

and they never will be, grimrock was about as close to mainstream as of late that i can recall hearing about outside of rpg news. all the kids want smooth movement like wizardry 8, when the incline is stepped grid movement.

fuck triple a, go indie all the way

 

[Dyspaire]

For what it's worth, I write shitty fiction for a living. Went to school for it, etc.

It should definitely be Mystic Land: The Search for Maphaldo.

2c

 

[JarlFrank]

Mystic Lands: The Search for Maphaldo

That does sound better in English.

I'd go further and suggest that that sounds significantly better, to me at least.

Well, Mystic Land (without s) will stay - as the land (the map if you will) itself is called that - The Mystic Land
But I'll suggest to others that we add "The" into the subtitle.

I'm not an English native speaker myself, but in that case, shouldn't it be "The Mystic Land"? Just as you yourself used the definite article twice with "land" in the first sentence.
Just putting it out there for native speakers to comment on, this could also be my pedantry / me being wrong.

Anyway, looks great! Will purchase if it comes out on GOG (don't have a steam account).

The Mystic Land: The Search for Maphaldo would sound awkward as a title due to the doubling of the article in both main title and subtitle.

Mystic Land can stand on its own, without need for an article.

Since you're probably looking at it from a German perspective, try to see it more as "Mystisches Land" rather than "Das Mystische Land". You don't necessarily require the article in German either.

For what it's worth, I write shitty fiction for a living. Went to school for it, etc.

It should definitely be Mystic Land: The Search for Maphaldo.

2c

I write good fiction for a living and agree

 

[Darth Roxor]

Mystischenlandesmaphaldosuchungsaltschulencomputerrollenspiel

 

[:Flash:]

Well, Mystic Land (without s) will stay - as the land (the map if you will) itself is called that - The Mystic Land
But I'll suggest to others that we add "The" into the subtitle.

I'm not an English native speaker myself, but in that case, shouldn't it be "The Mystic Land"? Just as you yourself used the definite article twice with "land" in the first sentence.
Just putting it out there for native speakers to comment on, this could also be my pedantry / me being wrong.

Anyway, looks great! Will purchase if it comes out on GOG (don't have a steam account).

The Mystic Land: The Search for Maphaldo would sound awkward as a title due to the doubling of the article in both main title and subtitle.

Mystic Land can stand on its own, without need for an article.

Since you're probably looking at it from a German perspective, try to see it more as "Mystisches Land" rather than "Das Mystische Land". You don't necessarily require the article in German either.

I agree that doubling "the" sounds awkward. However to me, having no article also sounds awkward, both in English and in German. To me, in the singular, you need either a definite or an indefinite article. Leaving out the article is something that to me seems to be mainly done by people who are not native speakers of European languages, often from Asia.

 

[JarlFrank]

Leaving out the article is very common in titles, and even in the body of text as a stylistic choice. There is nothing grammatically wrong about it if used correctly.

 

[luj1]

+1 for Mystic Land: The whatever

 

[SirBlabsAlot]

We worked on a few interesting places in the early game today, while we wait for Steam to check the Mystic Land Steam store page (yep, store page has been finally setup yesterday and will go live as soon as Steam allows it to )

So, here is one example:

 

[JarlFrank]

How did you get my local kebab salesman into your party

 

[SirBlabsAlot]

How did you get my local kebab salesman into your party
View attachment 41747

He couldn't resist the offer we made him.
He also knows quite a lot of magical stuff - ask him next time you're having lunch at his place

 

[luj1]

Did you use AI for portraits?

 

[SirBlabsAlot]

Did you use AI for portraits?

Nothing in the game is made by AI.
Monsters and portraits are made by the same artist. We got 3 artists currently working on the game assets

 

[luj1]

Fantastic

Can't wait and congrats for having the steam page up

Meanwhile I'd like to hear about your core pillars and if you have any original features or systems?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Monsters and portraits are made by the same artist. We got 3 artists currently working on the game assets

And how do you know they're not AI?

 

[SirBlabsAlot]

Monsters and portraits are made by the same artist. We got 3 artists currently working on the game assets

And how do you know they're not AI?

Because I know the guy personally (not a commission from a person far away from me) and he drew images directly as we wanted by description. I also saw him drew a few of these in front of me

 

[Catacombs]

SirBlabsAlot Are you releasing a version of the game for Linux?

 

[negator2vc]

SirBlabsAlot Are you releasing a version of the game for Linux?

Check this post

Ah, I see moderators created a thread, so we good.

So, yeah, as you probably all figured out, Mystic Land was (heavily) inspired by Wiz7 and a bit by EOB and M&M series. It's a FRP game with grid-based movement and fight that is very similar to Wiz7 fight (Ambush style), though we are trying to make a few quality of life changes in interface so it won't be so tedious after a few hours of play.
Interesting story (at least we believe so), lots of quests/side quests to complete and lots of different, we hope interesting, places to visit. If the first part will be received well, then the plan is to make a trilogy (with party import from saves).

The game was (really) started in the early 90s as written on the website, but was shelved for nearly 30 years after the "life" happened for me and my friend.

But we back now, hard at work on the game, team of 5, and we are planning to release it sometime next year for Win, Mac and Linux.

Let me know if you have any particular questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

p.s. If you have Twitter account, we twit a lot there (small bits of lore, screenshots, videos...) - it's worth following us at @megavisionsoft if you are interested in our game.

 

[SirBlabsAlot]

SirBlabsAlot Are you releasing a version of the game for Linux?

Yes, we plan to release Linux version as well.

 

[Casual Hero]

I am absolutely loving the artwork for this game. I think it looks great, (unlike 90% of modern indie dungeon-crawlers... sorry :c).

I am curious about the arrows that you have at the bottom of the UI. Presumably these are for navigating with the mouse, but I really don't know of a single person who plays a giant dungeon-crawler with mouse movement. I guess it is a nice option to have, but I also wonder if there could be an option to hide it.

 

[Lady Error]

I am curious about the arrows that you have at the bottom of the UI. Presumably these are for navigating with the mouse, but I really don't know of a single person who plays a giant dungeon-crawler with mouse movement.

It's a homage (and improvement) to the Wizardry 7 UI:

 

[Alex]

Well, Mystic Land (without s) will stay - as the land (the map if you will) itself is called that - The Mystic Land
But I'll suggest to others that we add "The" into the subtitle.

I'm not an English native speaker myself, but in that case, shouldn't it be "The Mystic Land"? Just as you yourself used the definite article twice with "land" in the first sentence.
Just putting it out there for native speakers to comment on, this could also be my pedantry / me being wrong.

Anyway, looks great! Will purchase if it comes out on GOG (don't have a steam account).

The Mystic Land: The Search for Maphaldo would sound awkward as a title due to the doubling of the article in both main title and subtitle.

Mystic Land can stand on its own, without need for an article.

Since you're probably looking at it from a German perspective, try to see it more as "Mystisches Land" rather than "Das Mystische Land". You don't necessarily require the article in German either.

I agree that doubling "the" sounds awkward. However to me, having no article also sounds awkward, both in English and in German. To me, in the singular, you need either a definite or an indefinite article. Leaving out the article is something that to me seems to be mainly done by people who are not native speakers of European languages, often from Asia.

I think using the article here can change the meaning of the title. The Mystic Land would imply that there is some sort of mystic land around which this, and perhaps future games of the series revolve around. While a lack of article implies, I believe, that "mystic land" is just a theme, central to the game but not a specific thing inside it. Examples of that would be "Dungeons and Dragons" or "Star Wars" or even "Chutes and Ladders".

At any rate, clearly the best name would be "The Mystic Land: A Search for Some Maphaldo".