KickStarter Stoneshard - open world roguelike RPG - now available on Early Access

[Yosharian]

"it's gonna be tits" well I love tits

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Alienman]

Only 1,5 year until full release...





...

 

[vazha]

how much of the game is playable now? Can it be completed, even in rough state?

 

[d1r]

Also, can somebody maybe post some endgame items? I wanna see how itemization in this game looks like.

 

[fantadomat]

Also, can somebody maybe post some endgame items? I wanna see how itemization in this game looks like.

What end game items you want,when a tenth of the game is finished?! Oh.....never mind,just saw that you are german.

 

[Zanzoken]

This game has sold between 500k and 1mm units according to Steamspy. It's pretty sweet looking but that still seems kind of insane to me for a pixel art RPG in Early Access.

 

[d1r]

Also, can somebody maybe post some endgame items? I wanna see how itemization in this game looks like.

What end game items you want,when a tenth of the game is finished?! Oh.....never mind,just saw that you are german.

Items that you possible could possess when for example killing the Troll, that came with the newest update. I guess that this one actually is a "late game" boss.

 

[d1r]

In all seriousness, what can you actually do in this game right now?
Do you just wander around the map without a MQ, doing random things until you die? The quietness here on the Codex about this game is peculiar.

 

[Harthwain]

I am trying not to spoil myself too much before the game releases, but from what I know you have to complete 3 quests from the village elder in order to get a cart that's needed for the main quest (or the Early Access) to reach a city. Other than that there are outdoor areas and a few dungeons you can explore. The map seems to be 17x10 big (in squares, each square = a screen). There are a few predefined characters (custom characters will be implemented later on). That's pretty much all I know.

 

[Fenix]

I played demo, it was decet, the end.
Do it like me.

 

[Yosharian]

Why not wait until it's finished? I'm so tired of hearing about the latest half-finished game. Don't get me wrong, game looks great and all. But I don't really want to hear about stuff that's going to be finished a year from now. Maybe I'm alone in this, I don't know.

 

[Thac0]

Why not wait until it's finished? I'm so tired of hearing about the latest half-finished game. Don't get me wrong, game looks great and all. But I don't really want to hear about stuff that's going to be finished a year from now. Maybe I'm alone in this, I don't know.

I feel you. I still keep adding ambitious early access products to my wishlist, but I only buy from there after filtering Early Access out. Same for GoGs in Dev. You gotta wait your turn like everyone else when you make a good game.
Stoneshard was the game that inspired me to do this, since the tutorial and early game present in the game is absolutely stellar. But all of the good stuff is missing. More than half of the talent trees cant be accessed yet. Feels like voluntary C&B to buy good Early Access games.

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

This game is quite fun, but lots of mechanics that feel necessary aren't there. Survival is big in this game - you have to eat and drink. You can kill plenty of game for food, but there's no way for you to make a fire to cook it (I haven't tried throwing a fireball on the meat on the ground, I suspect it won't work), so you're stuck buying food. Same goes for water - there are wells only in towns, and I would expect some lakes, rivers, or streams to be available for refills (properly boiling the water beforehand, thank you very much Neo Scavenger). No bodies of water yet. Another thing I would like is an ability to camp. Would be nice to go in the middle of the woods, go hunting, be able to store all the skins/meat in a tent near by.
The map system also could use some work - not talking about automap, but having the ability to add notes, place marks, etc. would be very welcome. At least a way to mark the current sector you're in.
I really enjoyed my 10ish hours playing it, but it does feel very incomplete, so I'm not picking it up again before it hits 1.0

 

[Harthwain]

You can kill plenty of game for food, but there's no way for you to make a fire to cook it (I haven't tried throwing a fireball on the meat on the ground, I suspect it won't work), so you're stuck buying food.

A proper cooking mechanic is supposed to be implemented in the future, but from what I know it's possible to cook raw food right now. What you need to do is find an existing fireplace.

 

[oscar]

There's so many forest mushrooms and food dropped from dungeon enemies available I don't think I've purchased food once (in fact I sell the good quality meat after cooking it and keep the cheap tough cuts for myself).

 

[Bloodeyes]

I have mixed feelings about early access. On the one hand it has allowed a lot of games to be made that would not have otherwise existed, but as a consumer I think it's a terrible deal. It's paying to be a beta tester. Fuck that, that shit should be free. You're helping with development by playtesting and making bug reports and in return you are playing the pre-release game for free. That's fair. Kickstarter is even worse. You take all the risk of an investment, only instead of an ongoing ROI you maybe get the product which may or may not bear any resemblance to the developers' original vision. Cool, but I can buy the product anyway after you release it? If you want startup money give me shares in your company! What's worse is your decision to invest is generally based on very little information from a person with an idea that is not very developed at all. They may or may not have the drive, organisation and technical ability to bring this idea to fruition and it will almost certainly shrink in scale from what you were initially promised as reality sets in for them. Or it may go the other route and bloat and become vaporware.

This thread was made 3 years ago and the game still has not been "released." Anyone who bought it 3 years ago will be sick of it by now. Even if they do return to the game once it is "released" (a misnomer given the game has already been released prior to being finished) they won't get the same enjoyment as if they came fresh to the game when it was completed.

But like I said it facilitates a lot of creativity so I guess I don't want it to go away. I'm happy to play what games are completed this way, I just low key think the people who actually buy early access/fund kickstarters are idiots. I feel the same about preorders. What's the advantage to you as a consumer over just buying the finished game after reading a review or two? To me the only way an intelligent person could spend their money this way is if they see it as patronage, money freely given to support the artist without expectation of any return, and any product received as an unexpected bonus. If you treat it as purchasing a product you are an ass hat and deserve to be waiting three years to play your game.

 

[gurugeorge]

I like the detailed and varied item art. I think developers sometimes underestimate how important detailed and varied item art is to immersion in RPGs, it sort of feels nice and comfy if you have detailed and varied item art, and it makes you like the game more because it makes the virtual world feel more real. I think it's a good ROI thing developers can do that doesn't take resources away from gameplay but adds a huge sticky factor to games. Just chain the artist in a basement somewhere.

Ofc the item art also has to marry with what you see the characters wielding (if not 1:1 then at least a reasonable approximation) too - another thing that's sometimes overlooked.

(This holds right down to crafting resources too - one of the nice things about the multiplayer game Warframe, for example, is the incredibly varied, lush and detailed item art, not just with weapons but with even the humblest crafting resources.)

Similarly for icons in general - good, "readable" icons can have quite an impact on first impressions. Too simplified and you don't get a visceral sense of what the ability does; too fussy and detailed and it just looks like a little pile of vomit, and you have no idea what it does.

 

[Infinitron]

I thought this was obvious, but recently I see more and more Codexers acting as if Stoneshard Early Access is something weird and unfortunate, like it's the same thing as an Early Access release for some story-driven RPG.

Early Access is pretty much the standard for sandbox, procedural, roguelike-type games. These games are designed to be played for hundreds of hours, and the fact that the mechanics evolve over time is part of the appeal. It's like a toybox that fills up over time with new toys to play with, shaped by your feedback.

 

[Fenix]

If so, judging how real roguelikes being developed, StoneHard will be in EA for 10 years.

 

[Drowed]

I'm not a big fan of playing EarlyAcess games or games that have some expansion or new patch to come out in the near (or not so near) future, but I think if there is an exception to this rule, it would be roguelikes. I would also normally say that "pixel art games" is something that has become somewhat repetitive and dull in recent years, but:

Well, that's some fucking beautiful pixel art. Every rule has its exceptions indeed.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-05-19-stoneshard-might-be-the-best-rpg-ive-played-all-year

Stoneshard might be the best RPG I've played all year
It's rock hard.

Think of an action RPG like Diablo and then envisage it turn-based. The enemies and every other character won't move until you do. Stand still if you want a breather and to think. And you will need to think because Stoneshard is brutal. It might look like a child-friendly SNES game but in reality it's, well, as friendly as most SNES games actually were. Even in what ought to be beginner battles, you'll be killed, and as you only get one life, this can be a bit of a bummer. (You can reload when you die but you have no manual control over saves.)

This mature approach bores into the RPG systems underneath. There's a wonderfully involved health system which divvies your body up into individual parts and allows them to be separately damaged and maimed. Have your left arm smashed and you'll suffer penalties to using that arm, naturally, but have it mashed completely and you'll be unable to use it and drop the weapon you're holding.

Therefore you need to tend to wounds and general condition after every battle, bandaging bleeds and salving minor wounds, or putting more seriously maimed limbs in splints until they stabilise. You can even apply leeches. All of this affects your pain gauge. Let it rise too high and, again, you'll receive a negative condition - a kind of debuff - which will negatively affect how you perform in battle.

Even the little mutilated monsters are cute.

It's not just physical disabilities either. Being a mercenary is a clearly tough gig, all that fighting and killing, and Stoneshard (like Darkest Dungeon) recognises this. You can suffer many kinds of mental afflictions on your path, from paranoia to megalomania, to obsession, narcissism, even psychopathy. Yes there are a few positive ones but they're a rare occurrence here. Throw in hunger and thirst and Stoneshard sounds like not a lot of fun, doesn't it? And yet it is. It oozes confidence and charm.

Stoneshard begins deep in a dungeon with you breaking a gruff character out of prison and escaping floor by floor. He sounds like Duke Nukem - he's wonderfully voiced. It's not easy getting out, by the way - it took me an hour or two. But this isn't actually the character you'll play in the longer game, or where the longer, regular game usually begins.

Once the prologue is over, the action goes outside, and it's very pretty.

It's only once you're out of the dungeon, sitting in a heart-meltingly nostalgic, pixely wooden tavern, you really become you. The game flips, and the person you were - the gruff old guy who broke out of the dungeon - becomes the guy hiring you, a mercenary, to continue doing the work he can no longer do. That's when you get to pick from one of a few characters and adventure out from there. What a great way to land you in a world.

Stoneshard is not all different. You'll recognise skill trees (not restricted by class), magic, levelling, blacksmiths - all the kinds of things you, like me, probably love and look for in games like these. But even here there are quirks. Take magical weaponry, for instance: some of it can be cursed, which means there will be drawbacks to using it. Sneakily - hilariously - the cursed weapon will also bind to you when you equip it, meaning

Sanity 100 per cent. Just saying.

if you equipped it in a bout of 'it's got higher numbers!' thinking, as I did, you will be forced to use until you find a way to remove the curse. You can do this by killing enough enemies to satisfy the curse (I haven't actually seen this happen), dip it in holy water, pray to your deity (if you have one), or cast a remove curse spell/scroll on it. Do you see what I mean? Stoneshard isn't afraid to be different, and I love that.

It's witty, it's bold, it's gorgeous, and it's immaculately put together. I might have only spent a few hours with Stoneshard (I was introduced to it as part of the Digital Dragons Indie Celebration on Steam, for which I was a juror) but it's quickly become one of my favourite games all year. I cannot put it down.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Guy must be new to roguelikes if he's stunned by cursed items sticking to you.

 

[Fenix]

This review sounds like the one who wrote it has maniacal-depressive syndrome, and was in maniacal phase.

 

[Abu Antar]

They were looking for an animator and found one. It'll be cool to see what they can come up with.