RPGWatch Forums - Mysterious Castle - Tactics Style Dungeon Crawl

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Mysterious Castle - Graphical Party Based Roguelike

Hey!

NEW! 1.8 is now available for OSX and Windows! Please try it out and let me know what you think. www.mysteriouscastle.com.

I've been working on a little game for almost a year now, and it's really close to ready! It's a hybrid tactics-roguelike-ultima inspired game. It's got the usual tactics fare of turn based combat, isometric tiles with levels (cliffs and gorges). It's got a lot of roguelike elements like line of sight, field of vision, huge mazelike levels. Its got some classic WRPG elements like reagents, usable items… and uh… other stuff.

The setting is pretty bland right now but I'm very proud of the interface. This is a fast paced turn based tactical game. I know that sounds bizarre but I haven't seen any other games out there that take the same approach to usability, so… time and user feedback will tell.

I know this'll piss some people off, but it's an iOS project, ports to every system imaginable are upcoming. I'm looking for beta testers right now, so If you've got an i-Thingy and like to test out something out of the ordinary then head over to mysteriouscastle.tumblr.com where you can find some screenies and beta signup.

Here's a teaser where you and some old dude are picking stuff off a corpse. So disrespectful!
http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/…at/looting.jpg

Looks nice. Too bad about the Ios. But I don't have any Iphone games yet, so why not start with this one. I just can't stand playing a game on such a small screen. It just doesn't seem right ;)

I'll probably take a closer look when the ports come out.

Are you planning a demo? If not then some youtube footage would be enough.

Hey!

I've released a beta for my graphical party based roguelike at www.mysteriouscastle.com. It's available for Windows and Mac right now, with a Linux port on the way.

I hope you like it!

http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/…iouscastle.png

cool, keep us updated

Eclectocrat now has the OSX download for v1.4 of Mysterious castle available. Unfortunately I don't have OSX; I need the windows version which he states should be available later this week <grumble..>
The players guide is worth a look…

Here's what's in v1.4:

Quote:

Ok, here is another build for OSX. I wanted to finish up all the loose ends but I couldn’t find the time, so I decided to release this now and save the cleanup for 1.5. The windows version should be ready in under a week. I’d release one sooner but I want to build a proper audio engine and have a lot on my plate this week, sorry. Anyways, I glossed over some features before, but here is the most important part of the changelog:

-Saving and Loading.

-Added 4 new player races: Halfelf, Gnome, Gnoll, Troll.

-Added ‘undead’ and ‘vision’ spells.

-Added cave levels. In some caves, you’ll find a passage which leads down to lower a lower cave. This cave may in turn lead to a deeper cave system, etc.

-Added offhand weapons (two weapon fighting).

-Items can now grant powers (eg. wands).

-Added flanking bonus to melee attacks.

-Added sneak attack.

-Sneaking now balanced and useful.

-Smith will now enhance your weapon if you promise to avenge him.

-Rough roads are now generated between the village and certain sites.

-Darkvision affects light radius, even when using a torch or lantern.

-F1 key toggles simple help screen.

-A death screen now shows up when the last party member dies.

-Added a very nice theme song, courtesy of ‘clynos’ at soundcloud.com.

-Added some ambient environmental sounds.

-In level generation, the ‘item’ level actually affects the number of chests generated.

-Added more powerful skeletons, including a skeleton mage.

-Removed ‘wisdom’ stat.

The feature which should do the most to making the game playable is saving and loading. It has worked well for me in all my testing, but there are bound to be problems as this is the first beta to have it. Please let me know of any problems, and if it’s not too much trouble, check Console.app in Applications/Utilities for the text dump.

The next version is 1.5 and I plan on making that a finished game. This doesn’t mean that I’m done with the game, just that for the first time, it’ll have all the things that make a game ‘complete’. The future beyond will start with a code cleanup, and from there I’d like to explore larger scale conflicts, urban terrain generation and improved AI.

One more thing you may have noticed is the included Player Guide. You can see the online version at the top left corner of the website. It’s a work in progress but already contains some useful information not documented anywhere else.
That’s all folks.

Ubbax
"My family was so poor that if I hadn't been born a boy, I wouldn't have had anything to play with" - Rodney Dangerfield

Hey!

Mysterious Castle is now available on the App Store as "support indie games" ware. That means that I'll take the proceeds and buy a copy of Windows 7 so I can port the game over and offer it for free for all desktop systems.

Please take a look at the trailer at www.mysteriouscastle.com.

Just bought the iOS version and although I would very much like to have an updated PC port there's definitely a lot of promise here. Electocrat's long-term goals (including destructible environments and even more epic, SRPG-esque combat) are certainly ambitious, and I feel that party-based gameplay adds so much to the predominantly single character-focused roguelike genre. Also, the music is great and the UI nice and clean (albeit too small for human fingers - as so often with iOS games - and perhaps also not quite as intuitive as the developer seems to think).

I have played some. Unfortunately PC , which is I understand not latest version.

I really have to give you props. Game looks fantastic. And there is lot of potential.

I bought the game and it's pretty interesting. Hard as hell to play with my big fat fingers on my iPhone, but I'll get a pointer or something to make it a little easier.

One suggestion would be to have the players manual on the first screen when you start the game. I couldn't figure out how to access my inventory (or anything) till after I went to your site or even having a simple FAQ on the first page where people can read that before playing will help with a lot of the confusion in the beginning. More info on the characters in the game itself would be nice as well.

I like the difficulty of the game. I figured I could just take out some kobolds with no problem. I found out quickly that isn't the case. They'll wipe the floor with you if you don't take advantage of higher ground, spells and certain weapon feats.

Overall it's ok. Just a little more explaining on how the game works and what you have to do would be great. Having that in the game itself would be great or even a tutorial.

Just spotted this one and grabbed it … thanks for supporting the RPG genre! I'll give some feedback here, and if I enjoy it enough drop a feature on it on Gear Diary. :)

Hey, thanks for playing!

I've been hard at work on the next iteration these last few weeks. Hindsight is 20/20, and now I really wish I had put in a tutorial mode. Alas, the very basic help-screen is all there is for now. I don't think I'll have time to put a tutorial in this upcoming update, but the next update will have one for sure.

The game is progressing in leaps and bounds, and I feel that every new version exposes the previous version as a buggy piece of crap. The list of new features is pretty huge, with many new items, monsters, updated UI elements, bugfixes and enhancements on the way. The world generation is being overhauled and the new forest is much more interesting and maze-like. The challenge level is very rogue-ish, in that you're likely to die unless you're very careful.

Anyways, I'm glad some people are enjoying the game, for the large (or average) fingered adult male, I've heard that the game plays really well on iPads. I'll make a universal binary when I've made enough money to buy an iPad to test on.

I promise that I'm working to make the game better everyday. All the annoying quirks and bugs are being cleaned out and the game will be a whole lot better with each iteration.

How is the PC version progressing?

How's the updates for the iOS coming? I've been playing this one and like it, but it really does need some updating. This potentially could be the best roguelike game on the iOS…..well not really a roguelike, but it's roguelike enough for me :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by skavenhorde (Post 1061107048)

Glad you like it!

I've got a big update in the works right now. I'm releasing for Mac and Windows (finally!) first, because if any game ruining bugs are present I want to weed them out before I push onto the app store, due to the long turnaround for updates.

This version has a new world generation algorithm, tons of new items and monster, mch improved interface, various bugfixes, lock-picking and pick pocketing, sneak attacks, and more stuff than I can remember right now.

Most importantly I focused on getting rid of bugs and making the game less frustrating. I'd love to give an ETA, but it never seems to work out the way I want, so I'll just say that the Mac version is finished and will pushed out in a day or two, and I'm backing up my computer literally while I write this in preparation of installing windows. A soon as I feel secure that the version is reasonably safe, I'll put it on the app store, definitely before the end of the month.

Hey! I just released a new version for Mac and Windows at www.mysteriouscastle.com.

The updated iOS version is waiting for App Store approval.
http://i1210.photobucket.com/albums/…Elementals.jpg

Awesome. Thanks! Stopped playing until you patched it. It's a little too raw in it's current state for me at least, but now I can give her another go…..well when APPstore decides to patch it :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by skavenhorde (Post 1061110060)

Awesome. Thanks! Stopped playing until you patched it. It's a little too raw in it's current state for me at least, but now I can give her another go…..well when APPstore decides to patch it :)

Well, I'd be lying if i said the game is really polished now, but I've certainly addressed a lot of the annoying UI issues, a few *cough*many*ahem* bugs, and generally increased the playability. This game is an ongoing effort and I'm nowhere close to done yet. If you've got any specific criticisms, I'd love to hear them. I'm so close to this baby that I have a hard time spotting her flaws ;P

One extra thing you may notice is that the game is much kinder to the battery and generates way less heat than the last one.

When I replay it I'll let you know. Don't mind being a beta tester ;) You've got some good ideas with this game it just needs some fleshing out.

Cool - I'm with Skavenhorde in that it is a cool game but a bit rough … and I have too many other things going on to spend too much time working through it now.

I downloaded the Mac version as well to check out. Thanks again for all of your efforts!