Serpent in the Staglands - Art Book & Expansion

Arhu

Arhu

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Whalenought Studios developers Hannah & Joe posted an update about their Transylvanian inspired party-based CRPG Serpent in the Staglands on their Kickstarter page. The contents:

  • A video
  • Marketing without an easy button
  • Expansion announcement -- apparently the expansion it will be automatically added with a big update
  • Art book is finished
  • The Future, in which they will try to get community members on board earlier
Here's a snip about the difficulty they face in trying to get the press to review their game:

While we've had and cherished a modest amount of user reviews, marketing continues to be a bit tough — it’s a game without an easy mode, and journalists can’t just jump in and make quick impressions, and we think that makes it difficult to get those early impressions reviews. We hear of a few folks that attempted that and got whiplashed with a learning curve like they haven't seen in years, which though kind of humorous to hear about, does filter the reviewers down to gamers that have patience, which is of course an incredibly slimming population. But learning to play and learning the world is part of the game, and a part we're really proud of.
Click to expand...
There's also a demo available for Windows, Mac and Linux, for those of you who want to try before they buy.

More information.
 
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All good news. Hopefully we see some more UI enhancements before that expansion.
 
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A graphics improvement would be the biggest need. The game looks like an 80's game, down to the native 320X200 resolution.
 
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I'm currently doing a Let's Play on Serpent in the Staglands and I can attest that it is, indeed, a hard game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4zXqYKXu50

On the other hand, it's charming and unique, and I'm really enjoying it.
It did surprise me, though, that there are so few LPers doing SitS. I don't know why...
 
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I think the graphics hold it back. I'm playing it too, but I have to limit my sessions to about an hour a day. It just gives me a headache, as my eyes are constantly trying to get the screen to focus.
 
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Morbus said:
I'm currently doing a Let's Play on Serpent in the Staglands and I can attest that it is, indeed, a hard game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4zXqYKXu50

On the other hand, it's charming and unique, and I'm really enjoying it.
It did surprise me, though, that there are so few LPers doing SitS. I don't know why…
Click to expand...
Start is hard but once you figure it out, it is much easier. Any BG1 vet should be able to play it without problems.
 
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crpgnut said:
I think the graphics hold it back. I'm playing it too, but I have to limit my sessions to about an hour a day. It just gives me a headache, as my eyes are constantly trying to get the screen to focus.
Click to expand...
Personally I would say UI is the problem, not graphics overall. Also I would like more/better animations in many places like when you hit someone or get hit, also more gory deaths.

I also had some performance problems on a much stronger computer than what should be needed. And of course loading times (which are not such a huge problem after I turned on to have the game run in background but I can understand less patient people hating this; at least there are no loading screens each time you want to enter a door like in PoE).

These are my main technical problems with the game.
 
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Have avoided picking it up because of the grafix. I don't think of myself as a grafix whore (don't really have the rig for it anymore) and I play a lot of indie games with simple grafix but I just can't get with this game's grafix. It wouldve done much better with a different look imho
 
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Morbus said:
Yep, that's my experience as well :)
Click to expand...
I like this quote from the devs:

While our next project will refine this, and maybe present this in a more sophisticated way, the ‘learning the world’ design is a philosophy and foundation we'll continue to use for all our games. It’s a concept we've heard a wonderful response for, and we'd love to fill that demand in new and fun ways in future games — we'll never take our p&p-inspired RPG roots and cater them to a modern audience for as long as we have an audience to continue.
Click to expand...
 
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SonOfCapiz said:
Have avoided picking it up because of the grafix. I don't think of myself as a grafix whore (don't really have the rig for it anymore) and I play a lot of indie games with simple grafix but I just can't get with this game's grafix. It wouldve done much better with a different look imho
Click to expand...

Same here. I usually don't care that much for graphics but that low resolution is really unpleasant.
I'd take high resolution ASCII "graphics" over that any day.
 
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I've got this game, but hear it's quite buggy? Will wait for a more patches before I play.

Daniel.
 
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