Grimrock

This game was proof that there is a big appetite for dungeon crawlers. i loved it. It was a quick play, and awesome.
I feel like this game was a "test run" to measure the temperature of the gaming community on this type of game. We love it. Now I want the real thing- I would love a game like this to be vastly increased....with mazes far larger, so that you can TRULY get lost in them. I did this game without any mapping whatsoever. I played "old school" and didn't even need graph paper. Levels were small enough that I could get through them and get familiar with them.

I feel like this game is the innocent kid, and now I am craving the Mafia Boss Pappa. The feeling of an infinite labyrinth, a game that would literally take weeks to finish, with the largest labyrinth in the history of gaming. now that would be awesome.

Please don't take this as a criticism...its not. I LOVE what you made, I just wish there was more now....larger, and grander. I want to be forced...absolutely forced...to use my graph paper or I'll never find the way out.

(give me infinity...or thereabouts hah -put this in the darkness, deep in the belly of the earth, without the blue sky)

It's great, almost on the level of Portal 1 in it's own niche. I fear a bigger project would feel more like Portal 2 though, you know? Sometimes smaller is better. Let the devs make what they have fun making imo, and don't try to please everyone. We'll get a better game if they love what they're working on, and don't feel forced to make levels arbitrarily longer and longer.

oh i think bigger is better. it keeps your fans locked in longer, you can charge more for the game....its just better business. the devs now know that their small investment in developing a small game has paid off. The devs are in a business, and business is capitalism, and from their perspective, there is a vast potential to reap amazing profits and start a great company...but small games probably wont do it. WoW is a great example of size matters. Now I know thats a completely different game, but what makes WoW so profitable is that its customers are immersed for long long periods of time. Most of us will solve Grimrock in rather short amount of time, and move on to the next game. Some very loyal fans might play Grimrock multiple times, but most of us will not. We will just move on. Bigger and larger keeps us around longer, keeps us locked in. Just my 2 cents. And yes, I would pay 49.95 for a version of this game that was significantly larger.

Oh, and it takes more than just "enjoy what you are working on" to justify tens of thousands of dollars (maybe 6 figures) crafting a game, I guarantee you the profitability component will be there for the next one, as it should be. Grimrock is far larger than the devs anticipated, and thus, they now are running a business (good for them! they deserve it), not just a project for their self enjoyment. Everything they do from this point on should never neglect the business component. I look forward to Almost Human being a well established game company, rather than a Rebecca Black one hit wonder. But to do that, they have to have a good, solid business structure in place. (I say this cuz I am a business owner, and most small businesses fail because creators of small businesses are "artists" and "creators" and not executive business managers). The critical part of Almost Human now begins- they have to put in place a solid business structure for their fledgling company, and then develop a new product...hopefully one that is much larger (and charge more for it)

Baroque wrote: I fear a bigger project would feel more like Portal 2 though, you know?

Extremely good, brilliantly made and hilarious? I could do with that.

To much handholding for my taste (Portal) and id realy like multiple paths through the Dungeon aswell. LoG is great but it could be so much more if we had a bigger Dungeon where you have to backtrack more and solve riddles across multiple Levels.

i support bigger dungeons.

i did map out every level on graph paper, but mostly because it's been so long since i had the chance/reason to do so i wanted to, even though i agree, i generally knew most of the levels by heart.

this also plays to another comment i made -- one of the biggest 'problems' with automap back in the day was that it destroyed complex spinner/teleport trap areas in dungeons because they became rather pointless.

this game had... well, (minor spoiler, just naming trap types) and... that's about it. and those are the best puzzles/traps for mappers.

don't get me wrong, there were some great panel/pit/obvious teleporter puzzles, etc. but invisible teleport traps can be truly devious - where you'll starve trying to get out of the labyrinth if you're not mapping carefully - and most of the best puzzles had scrolls that made the answer too obvious.

smaller with more complexity is better if you want a broader audience. if you make a game too massive, it envelopes the player, and shuts them out because they get the feeling it is either never ending or too much to remember. not to mention, the larger you make a dungeon, or a game world in in genre for that matter, the more trash filler you have to have, which means more useless ground a player has to cover, which will similarly turn them off.

the reason this game is doing (as well as it appears to be) as well as it is lies more in its puzzles as opposed to its size. im on level 7 currently, and i have had to consult a guide only once, which incidentally didnt even help me, because it just showed me what i already knew i needed to do, i just couldnt figure out what i was missing, and the guide didnt even help me out with that. the game is more about observation and intuition rather than breadth of content.

now, having said that, the game has some issues that need to be corrected, and rather than just delivering a huge dungeon, those things should be looked in to. im thoroughly enjoying my time with the game, and i look forward to expansion dungeons and whatever else may be released for it. but im not sure id be excited about 100x100 grid dungeons.

also, i hate games that do not have an auto-mapping function, particularly ones like this. far too many times as a kid did i play games where i had to hand draw dungeon to memorize where important things were. having the functionality in game A) makes more sense, B) keeps me from losing them, and C) in a lot of cases gives me all the functionality i need to make comprehensive maps. making me have to draw them myself serves no purpose other than to frustrate me because i do not know the parameters of coordinates of any given location.

affa wrote:i support bigger dungeons.

i did map out every level on graph paper, but mostly because it's been so long since i had the chance/reason to do so i wanted to, even though i agree, i generally knew most of the levels by heart.

this also plays to another comment i made -- one of the biggest 'problems' with automap back in the day was that it destroyed complex spinner/teleport trap areas in dungeons because they became rather pointless.

this game had... well, (minor spoiler, just naming trap types)

SpoilerShow

1 very simple spinner trap (2 of them at the entrance to the temple)
1 cool snake teleport trap, but the answer was a bit obvious on the scroll
1 way too easy teleport trap room (darkness solved it easily, as did a minute of trial and error)

and... that's about it. and those are the best puzzles/traps for mappers.

don't get me wrong, there were some great panel/pit/obvious teleporter puzzles, etc. but invisible teleport traps can be truly devious - where you'll starve trying to get out of the labyrinth if you're not mapping carefully - and most of the best puzzles had scrolls that made the answer too obvious.

to edit my above post, and converse at the same time...

there actually was one puzzle i had to consult a guide on, and that was the mage's entrance on level 6. i could find absolutely nothing at all to give me a hint at what to do there.

also, spinner puzzles are stupid. they worked in older games because they were rudimentary, but in games today, where compasses are standard, they are gimmicks, and nothing more. the teleporter puzzles in this game though have given me quite a brain exercise, which is fun, as well as some of the multi-lever/switch puzzles. they arent difficult, but they require an amount of thought, which is nice. to the maze of shadows, that place was far to easy, it really only took me 2 tries to get through it. i dont have a mage in my team, so that wasnt an option. which i guess means unless there is a way to deactivate it, ill miss a lot of the items in that area.

as far as complexity of the dungeons, a lot of people will probably scoff at me, but phantasy star 2 i think has had the most difficult dungeons of any video game i have played, and i have played a lot. eye of the beholder, dungeon hack, warriors of the sun, wizardry, shining in the darkness. ive been through the list. nothing beats the towers on dezolis or the dams on motavia for frustration.

Personally, I don't want a bloated sequel. I would like the dungeons to be as big as they need to be, and not just bigger for the sake of being bigger.

Disasterrific wrote:

Baroque wrote: I fear a bigger project would feel more like Portal 2 though, you know?

Extremely good, brilliantly made and hilarious? I could do with that.

quoting for truth.

i would swear that establishing this "proof" was part of a planned "sequel follow through" for Almost Human. would be just criminal if they didn't make the real game with a big enough dev team to give it the polish and detail that LoG lacks. and it does lack severely in many areas. there's a lot of class balance that needs to be done, a bigger game in general with a wider variety of items and spells and monsters, etc. LoG is a tiny tiny tiny game, honestly.

it would ruin AH's credibility in my opinion if they didn't take advantage of their success to show us what they're really capable of given a decent amount of time (and money).