The Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker - top-down open world adventure RPG inspired by MMOs

[LESS T_T]

https://olipa.games

Spoiler

From Finland-based team Olipa Games. They made some multiplayer hack and slash game before (still in EA limbo, seemingly abandoned) but they say this one is primarily singleplayer RPG.

When I posted about this game on the Steam thread last year I didn't think about it much. To be honest it looked like one of those basic indie hack and slash action RPG. But now that I somehow stumbled upon this game's store page again, it seems they're aiming for more roleplaying than a mere hack and slash, emphasis on adventure and permanent choices, all that.

Frankly it still doesn't look fantastic or something, it probably is too ambitious but I got enough interest to make a thread for it at least.

Well, if you're interested you can apply for playtest on Steam page. Looks like it grants access as soon as you apply.

Immerse yourself in a medieval fantasy world in this classic top-down single player adventure RPG. Journey through a sprawling open world and progress through dialogue options to uncover the story of Rothar Aercrest – the cursed lord to the remote lands of Imberthale. Acquire skills and powerful items by defeating enemies of varying types, interact with world objects and NPCs and discover engaging side-stories along the way. As you gain experience, you will be able to perform special attacks with differing weapons and learn a great number of unique spells, which will surely aid you in your fight against your enemies.

Rothar Aercrest is the Lord of Imberthale; a rural and peaceful land that rests mostly forgotten in a world otherwise rich with great kings, queens, sorcerers and intrigue. At least that's the way things used to be. One fateful day Rothar’s path crosses that of a wizard, Gabrius, who appears to be both tremendously powerful and frightfully malicious. Consequently Rothar soon finds himself caught within a mortal feud between two powerful wielders of magic, all the while bound by a curse he desperately needs to break away from. If Lord Rothar is to know peace again, Gabrius must surely die. That might not prove to be such a simple task, however. After all, what is death to the master of the Black Grimoire besides a mere nuisance?

The spellbook in particular aims to offer a most interesting variety of both combat and non-combat utility. Finding and learning new spells may prove a challenge in itself, and casting more demanding spells will require preparation, such as gathering specific ingredients. Feel free to create your own playstyle by using any combination of ranged and melee weapons and spells!

Alongside combat skills, you will be able to level crafting skills, through which you can acquire powerful artefacts. Although the world offers a ready selection of lootable weapons and armour, the most interesting and powerful items must be crafted by yourself. You may also craft and buy various trinkets and potions, which can be consumed for mighty temporary effects. Such items may be necessary too in the face of the most powerful adversaries. However, beware that crafting the most special gear will require you to find exceptional materials from potentially dangerous and hard-to-reach areas of the open world.

In Cursebreaker there’s no loading a save from a previous point in a playthrough. This means the few choices you are presented with tend to be permanent and can’t be taken back. However, it doesn’t mean that dying in combat is entirely without consequence.

You will “resurrect” in certain locations of the world, inconveniently away from where you died, potentially having lost some of the valuables you may have been carrying. But don’t worry, the game is not designed so you would die a lot and it offers plenty of potions and other tools to protect against death.

Level any of the 11 skills you deem most important to your playstyle. The skills are separated into combat, gathering and crafting skills; for instance, you will gain experience in archery the more you fire arrows at your enemies, whereas collecting metals and precious minerals with the trusty pickaxe will improve the mining skill, and forging them into weapons and armour will make you a better blacksmith.

In certain areas you will be able to see your friends and other adventurers online and share stories with them if you’d like. This is an option you can toggle on and off as you prefer.

Two authentic players chatting.



Ultimately The Black Grimoire is designed to be an adventure game, where your objective is to gradually grow your power to be able to further explore and discover the world, its places, characters and stories. The journey starts at a low point, but as you improve your skills and unlock more powerful items and abilities, you will eventually find all the tools you need to defeat the toughest opponents the world throws your way, the worst of them being the dark wizard Gabrius.

[insert mandatory Grimoire joke here]

 

[LESS T_T]

Reality check. They "downgraded" graphics to (almost) texture-less flat shading style: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1189290/view/3146322746574793502

Cursebreaker Dev Blog 3 - Graphics Rework and New Environments
Greetings again, fellow gamer-folk! I’m Pura and I come bearing news of our progress with The Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker.

First of all, thanks to all you who participated in our first playtest and provided us with feedback and bug reports – it is much appreciated. We’ve left the playtest open of course in case anyone still wants to jump in and see what the game is about.

Onto the issue at hand; last time I posted, I mentioned that we had a pretty fundamental problem with the graphical assets we used to make that first version of the game and their impact on performance and framerates. We were facing down a nightmarish amount of development time spent simply on optimising the assets. Moreover, we had some inconsistencies with the artstyle and quality between how some things looked and this would have become even more apparent later on.

So we decided it was best to completely rethink the looks of the game at this stage, to somewhat downgrade the graphics, in order to have a more solid foundation especially with long-term development in mind. Unfortunately for us that also meant we had to start a lot of things from scratch, including all the environments. But with that out of the way, let me reveal the new graphics style we’ve settled on – tadaa!

Sooo... if you played before and now feel terribly disappointed, you have my sincerest apologies. The new look is definitely more cartoony, less detailed and less… gritty? However, we’ll have a much more consistent artstyle now and it’s already making the game “feel” a lot better. Thanks to vastly improved performance, we’ve also been able to almost double the draw distance and implement less restrictive camera angles than before. No more nerve-wracking LOD-flickering and things appearing and disappearing in plain sight.

Since we had to start reworking the environments, we took the opportunity to remedy how we previously built everything pretty crammed in and close together. This time we’ve added plenty of space between points of interest and reserved room to lay down forests large enough to actually get lost in. Coupled with the increased draw distance, the world looks and feels a lot larger now.

Working with more space has allowed us to also create smoother transitions between different looking areas, or biomes. The starting crypt you might be familiar with from the playtest is now situated within a forest and, as you start moving toward the city of Haywind, the trees clear away into open meadows which slowly turn to crop fields as you’re nearing the city. Haywind itself has increased in size quite a bit (though still very much under construction) and we’ve added smaller villages along the way to the outskirts.

We also enjoy making caves. Caves make for good adventures.

Then on top of that, we’ve been in need of new models for armor and outfits, weapons and that sort of things. Here are some examples of those.

The simpler artstyle helps us create new ones at a much more efficient rate too so we’ll be able to have more variety and special looking items in game. But that’s about it for now. We’re working toward delivering the second open playtest of the game. In the meantime, we’ll try our best to keep you updated on our progress through these dev diary posts. Until next time, therefore – cheerio!

Pura

 

[Lady Error]

Should be sued by Cleveland Mark Blakemore.

 

[mkultra]

The art direction is really all over the place, some is textured, some is not. Did they make the game for people who lack VRAM or something? Who would be immersed in something like this, people who are used to playing with LEGO or something? Though at least LEGO is consistent.

 

[LESS T_T]

Yeah, they really should commit to one direction. They probably can take some hints from how the old school version of Runescape looks in modern display, or any other (almost) texture-less 3D games from the era.

 

[mkultra]

It's a waste to make a modern game like this looking more ""retro"" than it needs imo. I'm an amateur modder, if i can make this vegetation;

Spoiler

then what's stopping a small indie dev to do something at least similar? First 2 images are 10 years old by now (from my old morrowind mods). so it's not like this needed an exceptional graphics card to run.

I honestly believe most indie devs could use a good concept artist to come up with the general look, colors etc. it would make their games look so much better which in turn will make their game appealing to TONS of more people who would otherwise just give it a hard pass.

3D modellers is really the easiest thing for a team to recruit too, there must be millions of us. Concept artists might be harder perhaps, but yes, if they can't find one then just "copy" the look of a similar game, preferable one where people praised it looks.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The art direction is really all over the place, some is textured, some is not. Did they make the game for people who lack VRAM or something? Who would be immersed in something like this, people who are used to playing with LEGO or something? Though at least LEGO is consistent.

The lego is really a downgrade and it's not retro at all, i take M&M VI 2D rotating trees over this every day.

Still, having talentless devs using Lego design is a good thing, it always comes with dumb down "RPG" mechanism so you just know with one look you can safely forget the game and never check it back.

 

[V_K]

Lead a party of six microissues on a quest spanning 20 years. How many will remain with you to the very end?

 

[Tavernking]

Runescape

 

[cyborgboy95]

Full Release 1.0 Update
Greetings once again, you crazy medieval adventurers!

It's been a little while since our last content update, but today we're coming to you with the next one and we're calling it 1.0! So, does this mean that the game is finally 100% complete?! To be honest, we don't see it that way - we see there's still a lot of room for more updates to come! But it's time to transition the game out of early access.

Thinking back to our early access release in March 2023, the game included content-wise the main quest with the necromancer and... well, that was it for the most part. Since then, we've added much content in an effort to make the world not feel so empty, but worth exploring.

In that vein, today's update will also expand upon the world, but it will also contain additions to a wide range of areas in the game. This update should not break any old save files, which we've always felt is important for the kind of game we've been developing.

So, there's a lot to cover, but here's a quick breakdown of everything new coming in today's update:

• A new adventure to go along with Greywall and the main (necromancer) quests, this one begins with discovering a threat to Haywind (a chain of ~10 small to medium-sized quests).
• A new endgame focused mountain zone (that increases the game world by about 20% ish).
• The level cap for all skills raised to 100, and new crafting recipes, milestones and higher level monsters to go along with that.
• Inventory improvements, larger inventory size, universal bags.
• Visual improvements.
• Other QoL improvements and fixes.

New zone: Amarien's Mountains

After completing some new quests, you will unlock access to a new mountainous area, where new quests, scenery, enemies and harvestables await you! Beware, the enemies will also be beefier, so the additional skill levels from 50 -> 100 should come in handy.

The new items you're able to craft from the materials you find will also naturally make you stronger. While you're out there exploring, so far from home, only some of the ancient portals you find can teleport you back to safety.

If you're not careful, the wandering barbarian ambushers might come for your hide...

Map of the new mountain zone...:

Cozy mountain village, for your banking and shopping needs...:

Dangers out in the wilderness...:

As you travel deeper in...

And deeper...

The danger grows!

New Quests

Unlocking the mountains will involve picking up the journey from the (previously very incomplete) quest named Something Suspicious, which is gained by visiting Haywind town hall. An old friend from the early crypts will also join along for this adventure...

If you're playing on a save where you've already completed this quest, talking to the quest giver at Haywind town hall should start it again from the beginning (as some changes and rewrites to it have been made).

The quests that follow will lead into the mountains...

[h4]Wandering ambushers and poachers.[/h4]

Out in the 'wilderness' you may run into gangs of barbarian ambushers, who drop more loot but also get incrementally more dangerous as you defeat them. Hunting them down will contribute to finding rare crafting ingredients, some unique equippable gear and unlocking new spells.

You'll also run into 'poachers' who are competing for harvestable resources, they may try to defend their territory or run away.

You'll find scoreboards at mountain military camps that keep tally of how many ambushers and poachers you've taken down.

Battle with a large ambusher group:

We've added options for followers / hirelings, which may be unlocked at the mountain village. This trio includes a warrior, a spellcaster and a helpful busy-body battlefield looter. You may only have one with you at any given time.

In exchange for a bit of gold, they'll follow you anywhere, but should be especially helpful against larger groups of enemies in the mountains.

Loras the Nimble in action, being very adept at looting the battlefields for you:

Visual Improvements

Some work has gone to making the game look visually better, for example by improving the trees (which the maps are full of). Contrary to what intuition might tell you, but in typical game development fashion, the better looking assets are also more optimized and thus translate to some performance improvements. There are also more options in graphics settings menu to tweak performance.

[h4]New trees:[/h4]

[h4]UI improvements:[/h4]

Some art has been added to make the action bar feel better. And the dialogue UI has also gained a small visual uplift, plus it now displays the character you're conversing with, which improves the feel of the dialogue by surprisingly quite a bit.

New action bar:

New dialogue window:

Inventory management and bank improvements.

There are tons of different items in the game and that pool has only increased many-fold since we began early access. To accommodate that, the inventory size has now been significantly increased. In addition, you're able to acquire universal bag items in the game, with a separate UI, capable of storing further items.

[h4]General Storage Bags[/h4]
These bags, capable of storing any and all items, come in multiple sizes. You may drag items to the bags to store them within. One bag is granted for free at the beginning of the game and more may be unlocked later.

[h4]Bank[/h4]
The bank UI has received a full rework, which should hopefully resolve the prior glitchyness players have encountered with it and add some much needed QoL.
- Added the much requested bank tabs, and the option to rename them.
- Buttons to deposit all items from inventory, or all equipped items.

[h4]Horsy[/h4]
- Horsy's bags are also now fully accessible, just like the general bags, with the UI to add or remove any items.
- Just like before, you can talk to Horsy to send him off to the bank or the stables, but you may also acquire a new item to summon him without visiting the stables.
- Horsy has always been a bit clumsy in combat, so now he's a peace loving Horsy who gets agitated and runs off to the stables when you're in combat for too long. Good thing he can be more easily summoned now.

[h4]Scrolls of True Alchemy[/h4]

New stackable scrolls to turn items to gold on the go. These may be obtained as monster drops, from shops, or crafted at the new Mystic's workbench.

[h4]Salvaging[/h4]

You may encounter new salvager's workbenches and salvager's kits that turn some items into stackable scrap, which may be exchanged for crafting materials and other potentially useful items.

Trading scrap at a new scavenger merchant:

The Scavenger's Yard may be found west of Haywind, which will come to serve all your scrap related needs:

Achievements

New achievement UI has been added into the game, and with it 'achievement content'. Most of these relate to peaceful grinding, and serve as rewarding experience for engaging in such a playstyle.

From completing achievement, you also gain artifacts which may be traded for special item rewards at a new 'achievement shop' in Haywind.

[h4]Achievement Shop[/h4]
Arty M'faktis in Haywind will gladly take your artifacts in exchange for special items and abilities, such as larger storage bags, ability to reduce Homecoming cooldown and calling Horsy from the stables while out in the world.

Item 'encyclopedia' function.
Right click an item in inventory or press "I" while browsing the item tooltip to open a new UI window. For the most part, you'll be able to see which shops sell the item, which monsters drop it and what crafting recipes it may be used in.

Revamped prologue areas.
We reworked some freedom into the prologue, the ability to engage with the core skills of the game without being stuck in story, and a few optional tasks around the manor that reward experience.

Aercrest Manor has a new look!

You can engage with some npcs, tasks and crafting from the get go:

Manual monster respawn function.

When enemies are in the process of respawning nearby, a timer icon will appear in the top left corner. You can click it to manually speed up respawn times of enemies, if you're waiting for specific ones. The option is only available while out of combat.

Steam deck and controller improvements.

The game isn't exactly "officially fully supports steam deck" status, but some effort has gone into making it run better on the deck nonetheless.

Improvements have been made to the UI so it fits smaller screens better, and we've added 1 button commands for some actions that could only be made using a mouse before. You can bind these in the keyboard shortcut options, they include:
- Attack nearest enemy
- Interact with nearest object / NPC
- Pick up nearest loot



Misc QoL, improvements, bugfixes

- ESC key should now close most windows
- There is now an exit to main menu button in options
- There is now a pause game button in options
- Quest starting locations mostly now show in world map
- Additional drops (like acorns from trees) no longer consume the health of the resource
- Npc harvesters no longer consume resource health if near player
- Pistario nuts sometimes stop working after 1 use
- Effects and abilities that move your character (e.g. knockback, and abilities like leap attack and disengage) can no longer throw you to inaccessible locations
- Clicking the minimap compass now resets the camera
- Enemy kill counts now visible in bestiary
- Possible to craft exceptional bracelets and trinkets now
- Shops now show restock times
- Artisan orders now also accept bank notes and can be completed multiple times
- Etherlight quest items should be a little clearer now
- Increased pathfinder range (previously your character would stop halfway if you clicked too far, now the path should be recalculated as you move to reach the target.)


Original Game Soundtrack

We've uploaded the game soundtrack to both spotify and youtube

What does the future of the game look like?

We’re by no means done providing updates for the game. For the immediate future we’ll be focused on balancing loot, enemy stats, fixing bugs etc. based on your feedback. Arguably we gave ourselves a little too much to chew through in terms of new content additions in this update and didn’t take as much time reviewing prior content and making balancing adjustments as we ideally would have liked.

With that said, we’re happy to deliver all the aforementioned changes and additions to the game and will focus on delivering manageable, smaller updates for improvements in the near future, before planning any new, larger content additions. As for potential future content, we're certainly not short on ideas, but we'll let you know once we get to that point!

As always, if you have any burning questions, we'll do our best to answer them on our discord server, which is where you're most likely to get a hold of us - the link's included down below. A special shout out to Splattercat for his coverage of our game - it really has meant a lot to us - and to all the super active and helpful members of our discord community!

With that, it's once again time to wish you the most important thing of all - happy gaming!

Regards,
Pura

 

[Tyranicon]

I don't get the point of singleplayer runescape.

The whole appeal of MMORPGs is the social aspect.

 

[thesecret1]

Anyone played this? Reading through the description, all I'm getting from this is that it's single player Runescape. Yet it seems to have hit off pretty well, judging by the reviews on Steam, so I guess there's something more to it?

 

[cpmartins]

I don't get the point of singleplayer runescape.

The whole appeal of MMORPGs is the social aspect.

They probably kept the leveling and skill system but made them far less grindy.

 

[Kabas]

Anyone played this? Reading through the description, all I'm getting from this is that it's single player Runescape. Yet it seems to have hit off pretty well, judging by the reviews on Steam, so I guess there's something more to it?

Never played the original Runescape and i am not really into "collect thousands of materials to craft stuff" kind of games.
Demo is pretty alright after the game finally releases you from the lengthy prologue sequence. Gameplay is oddly meditative.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I don't get the point of singleplayer runescape.

The whole appeal of MMORPGs is the social aspect.

It's singleplayer runescape only in the sense that your skills increase the more you do them.

 

[Glop_dweller]

The whole appeal of MMORPGs is the social aspect.

 

[Cnaiur]

I don't get the point of singleplayer runescape.

The whole appeal of MMORPGs is the social aspect.

It's singleplayer runescape only in the sense that your skills increase the more you do them.

So just as much Ultima Online, if we're sticking with the MMO analogy?

 

[Litmanen]

Anyone played this? Reading through the description, all I'm getting from this is that it's single player Runescape. Yet it seems to have hit off pretty well, judging by the reviews on Steam, so I guess there's something more to it?

+1

 

[Infinitron]

 

[jaekl]

I don't get the point of singleplayer runescape.

The whole appeal of MMORPGs is the social aspect.

I think people that have only played modern MMORPGs won't get it because the old games emphasized socializing and in the newer games, in the rare occasion you're in a group, it's with a bunch of randoms who have already sprinted 100 miles ahead of you by the time you're done typing "hello". So they're all basically single player now.

 

[Readher]

I don't get the point of singleplayer runescape.

The whole appeal of MMORPGs is the social aspect.

I think people that have only played modern MMORPGs won't get it because the old games emphasized socializing and in the newer games, in the rare occasion you're in a group, it's with a bunch of randoms who have already sprinted 100 miles ahead of you by the time you're done typing "hello". So they're all basically single player now.

Throne and Liberty is modern and pretty good at forcing socialization. People talk with each other quite often. A lot of WoWbabies and FF14 troons hate it, of course.

It does come with Korean MMO flavor, which means grind-based RNG progression and PvP focus, where gear difference often means you just get deleted in less than one second, but there's beauty in alliances of hundreds of people organizing together to have monopoly on a boss too. Some people accept it as part of living in the game's world, others screech and want meanie PvPers punished because they don't get to be the anime protagonist of the story (the so called carebears).